The news surrounding Sprint adding UberConference so far has been as loud as a pin drop, but it is something to realize is clearly a tell for where pal Craig Walker is taking the company that is now known as Switch Communications. He's gunning for the enterprise, and with $18 million dollars of A16Z and Google Ventures cash, plus his own money, he and the team there have the pieces, parts and smarts to do it.
This reseller deal though will now hinge on the concept of selling through, as Walker and Co. have accomplished the "selling in" but are now reliant on the Sprint Business team to get it over the line. And to do that means the Sprint team has to live up to its side of the deal, something that in a changing and shuffling world of Sprint executives it may not be as easy as pie.
While UberConference's sister cloud PBX play, Switch.co is still in a very tightly controlled private beta, UberConference, is going guns a blazing, and this, their second reseller deal (the first was with Google Apps integrator CloudSherpas) further points them squarely in the direction of the enterprise.
And, if you're wondering why they enterprise market and Sprint makes sense? For years Sprint has been in the conferencing business on the wireline side of the house. Their enterprise market remains a core part of the wireless business today, and the close relationship between Google and Sprint isn't far flung for Walker who originally engineered the GoogleVoice Sprint integration along with sidekick Vincent Paquet (who also co-founded GrandCentral with Walker.)
This gives Sprint Business, an IP first conferencing service, and as Android smartphones and tablets can run on the Sprint network faster and with less hiccups (and not because no one is on the network) businesses of all sizes can get a better, all IP experience if they use the data network and Uber's browser integration via Chrome or Firefox — what's lacking though is the WebRTC aspects for Enterprise users who are locked to Internet Explorer and Safari…
To me, all this points to one thing eventually happening. Switch eventually becomes Google's Business Voice and eventually an exit again for Walker and his team…Batter Up!