MIA Distribution's unified comms business relaunches as Channel UC

MIA Distribution’s specialist unified communications business has relaunched as a new company called Channel UC, following the distributor’s acquisition by Bluechip Infotech in August.

Launched in 2020, the specialist business unit under MIA helps resellers become UC service providers through resources and professional services, including UC-as-a-service platforms, carrier interconnect for SIP trunking, opex models for hardware procurement, and access to a white labelled billing platform to manage end-user billing.

Channel UC will work with its own set of UC software vendors and said MIA’s acquisition by Bluechip won’t impact its solutions or vendor partnerships.

The company will be led by managing director Brad Milne, who is also previously the co-owner and managing director of MIA, and supported by 19 staff across Australia.

“The breakaway of Channel UC gives us the ability to increase investment and offer razor focus on our product offerings, the way our resellers consume UC technology and easy tools on offer to our partners to ensure they are capitalising on the growth in the UC industry and are offering leading edge UC software solutions,” Milne said.

Channel UC has also secured financial backing from an undisclosed source, and is also set to launch a new UC marketplace called Xchange. The company will also maintain its local UC infrastructure and upstream carrier interconnect relationships offering its partner network voice carriage, business fibre, NBN and billing solutions.

The vendor partners continuing to stay with Channel UC include Eclipse UC, Dialpad, CC4Teams, Analytics 365, Clobba as well as a range of Microsoft Teams Direct Routing solutions.

In the announcement, Channel UC vendor partner ContactCenter4All chief customer officer Anne-Meine Gramsma said, “We are extremely excited to have the full attention of the Channel UC business. The Milne brothers have built a fantastic business in MIA and subsequently in Channel UC more recently and they have our full weight of our support as they break away to focus entirely on our software products.”

In August, Sydney IT distributor Bluechip Infotech acquired MIA Distribution in a bid to expand into the local unified communications market.