Telco Systems has cast a strong vote of confidence for the channel, launching a partner-based sales program that it says the company will count on for as much as 40 percent of its annual revenue.

Wednesday, the solution provider launched what it's calling the "Open Edge Alliance," a partner ecosystem designed to give members the ability to develop apps that become fully certified components of Telco's suite of solutions.

Ben Heisler was appointed senior vice president for sales in the Americas for Ipanema Technologies last week, and he comes to the company's Waltham, Mass., U.S. headquarters with hopes of using the channel to make significant steps into the U.S. market.

Seasoned executive, innovator and longtime entrepreneur Kira Makagon knows a thing or two about the ever evolving IT landscape.

She is currently the executive vice president of innovation at RingCentral, which touts itself as a leading provider of cloud business communication solutions. She has also co-founded startup companies that had successful exits, like Octane Software, which was bought by E.piphany in 2000 for $3.2 billion.

Industry experts are predicting the demand for Unified Communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) will continue to increase over the next few years. The mobile UC market alone is expected increase from $5.2 billion in 2014 to $17.4 billion by 2019, according to a forecast report by the research firm MarketandMarkets.

Cisco Systems recently unveiled its first Internet of Everything (IoE) Partner Playbook that provides a blueprint for partners to capitalized on what Cisco says will be a $19 trillion market in the next decade.

The networking giant is looking for partners who are eager to dive into four vertical markets – public sector, manufacturing, transportation, and utilities – to solve problems for customers through Internet of Things (IoT) and IoE.