NWN Carousel Targets Hybrid Work Market With New Product

‘We’ve been delivering hybrid work environments for over 20 years, and we‘ve become a strong expert in this space. ... When COVID hit, our growth really accelerated. When “hybrid work” got noticed, we had already been doing it. We didn’t pivot to hybrid work because of COVID. We were already there,‘ says NWN Carousel CEO Jim Sullivan.

Cloud communications solution provider NWN Carousel made a play to better integrate all the requirements for building hybrid work environments with the introduction Monday of its new Hybrid Work Suite.

The Hybrid Work Suite is NWN Carousel‘s approach to integrating the six key components for hybrid work environments, including devices, contact center, unified communications, security, collaboration, and networking, said Jim Sullivan, CEO of the Waltham, Mass.-based solution provider.

NWN Carousel, formed by the mid-2021 acquisition of Carousel Industries by NWN Corp., has focused on building hybrid work environments long before they became well-known as a result of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, Sullivan told CRN.

[Related: NWN Carousel CEO Jim Sullivan On The ‘Huge Advantage’ Of Scaling Up In Cloud Communications]

“We‘ve been delivering hybrid work environments for over 20 years, and we’ve become a strong expert in this space,” he said. “We can deliver all six of the key elements needed. And when COVID hit, our growth really accelerated. When ‘hybrid work’ got noticed, we had already been doing it. We didn‘t pivot to hybrid work because of COVID. We were already there.”

What‘s new with the Hybrid Work Suite is the ability for NWN Carousel to manage all facets of the company’s offerings through a single platform, which the company calls EMP, or Experience Management Platform, Sullivan said.

“We can manage for instance a clients Avaya, Cisco, and Microsoft environments simultaneously,” he said. “Laptops, CRM (customer relationship management), WebEx or Teams, and more can be monitored all at once. And if any issues occur across the environment, we can manage it whether its on-premises or in a private or public cloud.”

NWN Carousel‘s Hybrid Work Suite takes many components businesses have been using on-premises and shifts them to the cloud, Sullivan said.

“A lot of companies do management over the network only, or via communications only,” he said. “But not a lot manage devices or security in a single platform. We manage devices, contact center, unified communications, security, collaboration, and networking. We‘re focused.”

Hybrid Work Suite is available as a complete suite, or clients can pick and choose which components to implement, Sullivan said. It currently supports single-tenant and multi-tenant cloud deployments across Cisco, Avaya, and Microsoft calling ecosystems starting at under $20 per user per month.

NWN Carousel is also making its Hybrid Work Suite available to other MSPs, Sullivan said. However, he said, the company‘s focus is on bringing the full suite to its 7,000 customers.

NWN Carousel has a three-year development roadmap for the Hybrid Work Suite, but for the first half of 2022 will focus on rolling it out to its clients, he said.