Konekt may be a new name in the market, but it is a long-established business that is focusing forging a new direction to help customers to harness the power of AI, UCAS and more to maximise the potential of their business.
Back in December 2025, it was announced that Northamber had acquired the hardware business of Nuvias UC (see News in the Channel issue 36 for more on that), while the remaining business was renamed Konekt.
The decision to split the business was some time in the making. “When we looked at our business and the strategic direction for Nuvias UC in January last year, we knew how the industry was moving,” explains Joel Chimoindes, chief executive officer of Konekt.
“We looked at that hardware business, and we had high market share, strong partnerships with vendors like Yealink, Neat and HP Poly, and fantastic customer relationships. But the hardware collaboration market has matured very quickly and started to level out. When markets level out, they become tougher, and the market becomes much more competitive.
“As well as that, we saw IT market trends around how the market was polarising into must-have and nice-to-have decisions and driven heavily by budgets. The must-have decisions were around security, Windows 11 upgrade and AI.
“Collaboration and hardware has fallen into the nice-to-have category. All those things influenced the overall market, making it more competitive. We felt that our real strengths as a business was in software and services, and that business was growing at 20%.
“We took the decision that we would have a strong plan as we ended the year on what we were going to do with the hardware business. Primarily, we looked to sell, and Northamber felt like a fantastic partnership for that business. We felt that Northamber shared a similar set of values and ethos to us, and their passion for specialist distribution and how to help partners succeed was paramount.
“The sale to Northamber felt like a great fit. They were more operationally and logistically refined than us in that area too, which meant they could deliver a more cost-effective service.”
Not just a continuation
Following the deal, Nuvias UC was rebranded as Konekt. Joel says that the rebranding felt necessary as it wasn’t just a continuation of the old business.
“When we were looking at our business last year, we felt that this was a fantastic opportunity to change and grow and develop in a new direction,” he adds. “We simply could have just rebranded, and said, ‘This is us’, but it’s much more than that. We’re changing the ethos of our business and the way that we think about it. We’re putting AI and automation at the heart of what we do, that’s a key change. Not just from a system point of view, but from a mentality and a culture point of view too. We’re really nurturing that internally. People embrace that AI capability because it also means we can convey that to our partners on how we’re doing that ourselves as well.
“It also is the springboard for us around how we evolve our culture, systems and go-to-market. Our business was already growing at 20% and we have strong growth ambitions this year too.
“I’m proud of the team we’ve got and how we work together. But that needs to continue to grow with automation and AI inside the business. We are also looking to selectively expand our vendor partnerships, and our services and technical capability.”
AI value
Joel believes that using AI and automating systems can deliver value and efficiencies. “There’s no great AI moment where everything suddenly changes and it all works perfectly,” he says. “I look for where the cultural adoption of it starts to spark across the business. For instance, where our team members look in their own work and look at mundane tasks, and they automate them. Such as we put all our HR policies into a customised AI companion in Zoom. Now, anyone who has access to the AI companion can ask questions about our HR policies, such as how many days holiday they have? What is the travel policy? All those things can now be simply answered via the AI companion.”
Joel adds that the pre-sales team has also implemented an AI companion that answers pre-sales product questions from the sales teams. “This made our pre-sales teams far more productive because they could concentrate on helping our customers and grow products, grow solutions, rather than just answering questions on what licence goes with this, for example,” explains Joel. “None of these are great big AI moments. They’re all examples of AI being implemented throughout the organisation.”
Post-deal, Konekt partners and customers can still expect the same level of service they received in the Nuvias UC days, Joel emphasises. “We will also selectively expand out our vendor portfolio. Our ecosystems around Zoom and Microsoft are our strategic place, and we’ll selectively add in vendors that complement those platforms. You’ll see us also expand our technical services capability to add additional services in around the Zoom and Microsoft platforms to enhance the capability and capacity of our resellers.”
Future confidence
Joel is confident about the future for Konekt, thanks to its investments in automation portals and self-service portals. “Our partners will see that roll out over Q1 and beyond,” he adds. “We have also invested in our technical capabilities, whether that’s for pre-sales implementation or post-sales support, we can enhance our resellers’ capabilities. When you take these two things and combine them together, which we have, alongside a portfolio of cloud communications vendors, specifically around Zoom and the Microsoft ecosystems, it is a powerful proposition.
“I believe that we have something unique in the cloud communication space that has big value to our partners and vendors. Our place in the market is combining those two things together. There are other players in this market that have a fantastic automation platform, or good technical capability, but not both like we have.”
Having this proposition positions Konekt well in a market that is becoming increasingly difficult to predict. “The one thing you know is it’s going to be unpredictable,” Joel laughs. “I don’t think budgets are going to get any easier this year and we’re still going to have the caution around spend that we’ve experienced previously.
“AI will continue to play a significant role in how people think about in their business. The interesting thing about that is when you look back to whenever there was a shift in technology or in buyer’s needs that invariably had a start, a middle and an end point. But with AI, I can’t see an endpoint, I can see a constant evolution of what can be achieved inside end user businesses. Therefore, we need to make sure we’re evolving our business in line with that.”
The phasing out of legacy infrastructure and digital transformation will also be a big trend in the coming year. “The switch off in the UK when that happens next year will become a compelling event to get people from an on-prem to an off-prem solution and retire old infrastructure as well,” says Joel. “I use this phrase compelling events; I think that’s important. You need compelling events when markets are tough to help people refine where they need to focus their budgets and growth. Last year, that compelling event in the IT industry was Windows 10 end of life and Windows 11 migrations.”
Given these trends, Joel is understandably positive about the future for Konekt and the wider market. “The market areas we inhabit are growth areas, which means we can help our partners grow as well,” says Joel. “Things like legacy infrastructure being retired, and businesses are reaching the end of their first phase of their UCAS platform and are now looking whether they upgrade what they have or move to something else. All these present fantastic opportunities for us. Adoption of UCAS platforms is going continue, which means cloud communications will continue to grow too.
“I’m energised by what AI will continue to do in our market and will be driving even greater productivity gains in businesses. I’m excited about the next 12 months and beyond, I think we’ve got a great opportunity in front of us.”
