Cloudli Communications Deepens Channel, Sales Bench As Company Preps To Become 'Premier’ UCaaS Partner

‘The Cloudli name has been around in the Canadian market for a long time and it’s a pretty well-known staple. What it isn’t is a staple in the U.S. …This is going to be our coming out party stateside,’ the UCaaS specialist’s new channel chief tells CRN.

UCaaS specialist Cloudli Communications is ready to go after the underserved micro-SMB to small business segment in the United States and is expanding its team with this major opportunity in mind, the company’s newest executives told CRN.

Chris Holloway and Ryan Herrmann, two seasoned telecom and channel sales leaders, are coming on as Cloudli’s senior vice president of sales and vice president of channel sales, respectively. The two will work in concert to extend awareness of the company’s UCaaS platform that will also include other offerings, such as SD-WAN, access and security over the first half of the year through the channel to smaller, technology-dependent organizations.

“ The Cloudli name has been around in the Canadian market for a long time and it’s a pretty well-known staple. What it isn’t is a staple in the U.S. Our goal here is for the brand recognition component of it. We’ve identified where to play, how we’re going to play and what we’re going to do to play and win in that space,” said Herrmann (pictured above). “This is going to be our coming out party stateside.”

Cloudli, which does 100 percent of its business through partners, in January brought telecom industry veteran Jamie Minner as its new CEO as the company kicked off its transformation plans for 2024.

Holloway said that the company is going to “aggressively” go after the micro-SMB and small business segments in both Canada and the U.S. in 2024. In these market segments, the company wants to be a “premier” partner, he said.

“This isn’t a race to zero. We have no delusions of grandeur about going into spaces where we wouldn’t be a good fit. We’ve got our sweet spot right in the crosshairs of what we’re going after [and] we’re building the entire organization, from sales, to support, to product, wrapped around that segment,” Herrmann added.

Holloway, a channel veteran, joins Cloudli from Ontario-based UC and UCaaS provider Sangoma Technologies where he spent nearly two years as senior vice president of North American channels and senior vice president of channel sales. Before that, he held sales positions at NetFortris, now owned by Sangoma, as well as a channel sales role at Chicago-based telecom services distributor TBI Inc. Holloway also held a variety of channel sales roles at Fuze, Logix Fiber Networks, and Fusion. He co-founded a telecom and wireless services distributor company called MpAct in the late 1990’s and grew the firm for four years to more than $6 million in annual gross sales before the company was sold in 2000.

Holloway’s responsibilities at Cloudli in his capacity as senior vice president of sales will include overseeing sales in Canada and taking responsibility for the channel efforts in the U.S and Cloudli’s new group that it’s bringing in for the region, which will be led by Herrmann, vice president of channel sales.

“I’ve spent a whole career reshaping, building from the ground up, and recently demo-ing and trying to rebuild a channel organization, so my experience of failing my way to success has been tried and true,” said Holloway (pictured directly above). “We’re going to get out there and earn it and visit partners and serve an underserved market, the old school way.”

Telecom and tech veteran Herrmann also hails from Sangoma, where he has served as vice president of channel sales for the last year. Before that, he held a variety of channel sales leadership roles as UCaaS provider 8x8, including regional vice president of West channel sales and senior national channel director. Before his time with 8x8, Herrmann spent three years as vice president of strategic development for telecom and utility solutions provider Renodis and served as the interim chief operating officer and chief marketing officer for Secure Digital Solutions, a cybersecurity consulting firm.

As channel chief, Herrmann will lead both channel groups in the U.S. -- the company’s national channel sales organization and its wholesale organization stateside.

Like Holloway and Herrmann, Cloudli’s new CEO Minner also comes from Sangoma, where he served as the company’s chief revenue officer.

Cloudli over the last three years made a couple of VoIP acquisitions, including Montreal-based Omnivigil and Summerville, South Carolina-based ConnectMeVoice. Cloudli also plans to spend 2024 bringing the two companies into the fold so that all the segments operate as one company, Holloway said.