Netherlands-based Sona Business has been delivering customized internet, cloud, and hosted unified communications service packages to businesses through the reseller model since 2012. Founders Sonia Harjani and Walter Perris had launched their company with a vision of disrupting the marketplace for small to medium businesses (SMBs) by taking the highly personalized service of a boutique consultancy and delivering it across a wide territory by partnering with local resellers.
Launching their business by using a virtual environment in PortaSwitch through a third-party vendor had made that vision achievable – but as their business grew, the Sona founders were becoming frustrated at the delays they were facing in meeting their market’s needs: each issue or request from their customers and resellers required them to open up a support ticket with their own provider and wait for it to be resolved. Read on to find out how Harjani and Perris came to realize it was time to take control and go straight to the PortaSwitch source.
An achievable entry point for BSS solution ownership
Sona first launched 14 years ago with a narrow focus on providing wholesale international voice minutes to businesses. But soon, the company expanded to internet and mobile solutions, and today it offers customized packages that include SIP trunking and cloud PBX services, data center connectivity, virtual numbers, private cloud hosting, cloud contact center services, FMC, mobile messaging and data, and more via its comprehensive EziMobile and EziData brands. Along the way, Sona expanded its service area from the Netherlands to Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, and the UK.
From the start and through all this growth, Harjani and Perris have been relying on PortaSwitch to support Sona’s operations – but that initial decision was not their own. “Our original vendor was using PortaOne, and that’s how we got introduced to it,” explains Harjani. Launching as a PortaSwitch “renter” in a virtual environment owned by a separate company was an affordable way for their business to enter the market. Discovering that the platform was a great fit? That was a bonus.
“We found it was a good product on the carrier level, but also on the partner level,” Harjani says. “We work mainly with resellers and channel partners, and the PortaOne solution was perfect for that,” she says, explaining that PortaSwitch allowed them to create a discrete sales channel for each reseller partner.
From “renter” to independent owner of a BSS solution for telcos
Using a virtual environment through a third-party vendor helped Sona get off the ground. But with a value proposition centered on highly responsive service, Harjani and Perris knew they would need to take the next step if they wanted to stay competitive. That moment arrived in 2022, when their host vendor was acquired by another business.
“When you’re going through someone else [to provide technical support to your customers], you’re always delaying your communication process and getting delayed answers,” says Harjani. Those delays were making it challenging to provide the boutique experience they wanted to deliver. “That built up frustration,” she recalls. Add to that a misalignment in business vision between Sona and the new owners, and Harjani and Perris knew it was time to go.
There was one thing they didn’t want to leave behind, however: their PortaSwitch platform. But this time, they wanted a direct relationship with PortaOne, to better enable that fast and seamless service.
Working with the PortaOne team, Sona decided on a georedundant PortaSwitch installation on virtualized machines. “PortaSwitch is our SIP trunking platform for our IP PBX, and we have several locations where we’ve deployed those clusters,” explains Harjani. The company’s previous vendor was operating on PortaSwitch MR95, so Harjani and Perris also took the opportunity to update their system to MR110.
The migration process was quite easy. We blocked off a few dates and informed our customers that we were doing a big migration and that they might experience some downtime. But it was very smooth; it went in a jiffy.
Sonia Harjani, Sona Business co-founder
In the end, Sona experienced a combined half-hour total downtime over the entire migration process. “We were really amazed by that,” Harjani recalls.
Independent, responsive, and ready for the next stage
Now, Sona can respond quickly to customer demands. “We feel a lot more in control. Before, everything used to go through [the previous vendor]; now, it’s direct communication with PortaOne. If there’s an issue, we have a support line to a customer success manager; when an update has been released, there’s very good communication between us and the engineers at PortaOne,” says Harjani. “Since we made the move, our challenges have been way, way less.”
Adds Perris: “Our relationship is fantastic – I have the PortaOne team on Slack, so if anything comes up, I can chat with them.”
That reliability and responsiveness are now enabling Sona to enter the next era: launching a full MVNO to cater to the growing eSIM market, with a focus on travelers. The venture will be Sona’s first experience with direct-to-consumer sales.
“We were already covering SIP lines, SIP trunking, and connectivity in so many places around the world… We had so many of the components in place, so it seemed like the right next step to add to our portfolio,” explains Harjani. “It gives us more flexibility in what we can offer to our customers, and we can offer it all in one package.”
Sona will rely on PortaBilling as the core billing solution for the new venture, and they are now looking at vendors that have pre-integrations with PortaOne for the mobile core and eSIM solutions. As they build out their system, Harjani and Perris credit their newly independent relationship with PortaOne for giving them a foundation they can expand on.
“Having that direct access and all that support allowed us to create more product offerings,” says Harjani. “Sometimes we think: why didn’t we do it earlier?”
Ready to become an owner of your own BSS solution for telcos?
Sona hopes to launch its new service this summer, starting with a data-only option and then expanding into VoLTE. Meanwhile, Perris and Harjani are examining the low-code options available to them in the PortaOne Add-on Mart to decide on what services they should grow into next.
“PortaOne is doing a great job – all the add-ons, all the features are amazing,” says Harjani. “I can really recommend PortaOne to anybody out there who is looking for a BSS solution or any other kind of telco solution… They’re really nice to work with, and above all they have a great product line.”
If you’d like to chat with us about PortaSwitch, PortaBilling, PortaAIM, or any of our flexible telecom, AI, and IoT solutions, reach out to our team. We’re always ready to support you through your next stage of growth.
