VoIP Blog - Tehrani.com

September 5, 2007

There is more and more talk of call center consolidation and suites of products from single vendors seem to be what analysts and many companies are clamoring for. I came across an interesting twist on getting educated on this space via a webinar focused on a term I never heard before. Specifically: Consolidation 2.0.

 

As call centers have become more sophisticated so too have they gotten larger and more complex and especially difficult to manage. For example hiring agents may mean entering their information into myriad databases and disparate systems. Consolidation should in a perfect world allow companies to reduce busy work and instead focus on growing the business.

 

If you are interested in learning how the benefits of call center consolidation can assist your company, be sure to register now as the session takes place Thursday, October 25, 2:00pm ET, 11:00am PT.

September 5, 2007

I recently had the opportunity to ask Sandra Gault, EVP of Marketing at the rapidly expanding communications product company Allworx about the evolution of IP communications in the SMB space, VoIP and the direction her company is taking.

 

Allworx provides businesses with all the mission-critical communications support in a single system. They combine PBX and Key phone functionality with PC network services, along with VoIP, secured Internet access, remote office, group collaboration tools, and messaging software such as email, voicemail, unified messaging, follow-me calling, and group calendaring.

 

To learn more about the company, read this article published on TMCnet from earlier this year. Be sure to read this interview to the end… The answer to the final question is pretty surprising.

 

SG: Our initiatives continue to enable the 3.5 million small to medium-sized (SMBs) businesses in the U.S. to transition risk-free and affordably to the benefits of VoIP, replacing the aging installed base of TDM key telephone systems that are incompatible with VoIP.

SG: In the burgeoning SMB market transitioning to VoIP, Allworx has developed a strategy that responds to the top three concerns of small businesses in the world of VoIP: price, features, and reliability. The Allworx product line and sale channel were engineered to ensure answers to these concerns were the best in the market.

 

Allworx has taken the very best of VoIP features (multi-site, remote users, presence management, cell phone integration, unified messaging) and combined it with the traditional TDM key system features (true line appearances, DSS/BLF) that are critical to small businesses today. We priced our solution to match that of traditional key systems because SMBs shouldn’t have to pay a premium in equipment to move to VoIP. Finally, by selling exclusively through trained and certified local resellers and by building an “appliance-like” server, we’ve ensured that Allworx system installations have the highest success rate in the VoIP industry.

 

This strategy — focusing on SMB features and high reliability all without paying a premium in price — allows Allworx to address all “professional” small businesses, not just the VoIP “early adopter” market segment.

 

SG: In our SMB market, in addition to the savings through VoIP (e.g., leveraging SIP trunks and multi-site communications) the biggest impact comes through the flexibility and mobility of what VoIP offers with features such as presence management, unified messaging, remote users, and mobile convergence. With SIP communications, SMB’s can be constantly and seamlessly in touch with their customers and vendors, both in or out of the office with no visible difference.

 

SIP has also provided us the platform to build application bundles that further enhance our core offering such as real-time disaster recovery, data backup services, and LAN/WAN management services.

 

SG: Features, minimal disruption during installation, and reliability are the key requests. When SMB’s are looking to adopt VoIP, they are demanding traditional Key System functions such as line appearances and DSS/BLF. They’ve integrated these features into their daily operation and become highly dissatisfied if forced into “PBX-equivalent” features such as parking orbits, bridged appearances, or computer based DSS/BLF tools. These are inherently more complicated and cause significant disruption when training end users used to working with key systems over a period of decades. Allworx provides the “best of” from both worlds — VoIP and key systems.

 

Reliability comes in part through the ability to simultaneously support TDM/PSTN trunks as well as the newer VoIP lines, allowing transparent fall-back and providing their expected “five 9’s” reliability. In many cases, Allworx customers install their systems as direct replacements for their TDM key systems, keeping the same PSTN voice service in place with the intent to transition to VoIP gradually over time. The other main driver to reliability is the five years of experience and 40,000 end-user base built up by Allworx. Our IP-PBX/KTS systems come up almost out of the box, minimizing disruption, and are very robust to any LAN/WAN issues that plague other installations. There’s minimal configuration, minimal interoperability issues with other pieces of equipment in the SMB’s LAN, and a host of diagnostic tools for the reseller.

 

SG: Allworx has made these barriers into winning differentiators for us.

 

SG: Today, true IP PBX sales into professional small business (less than 60 employees) represent less than five percent of all sales. Pure TDM phone systems represent about 60 percent and TDM with IP gateways (or IP enabled) represent 35 percent of all sales. We have not seen or experience hosted IP PBX as playing a significant role in this market. Hosted IP PBX represents less than one percent to two percent of the overall sales.

 

In the future, we expect to see IP PBX vendors doubling in sale every year for the next five to 10 years. In 2008, we anticipate this increase in market share for IP PBX to take place due to the wide availability of SIP trunking and implementations of more mature QoS tools for SMB LAN/WANs.

 

SG: We’re excited about their entrance because they bring awareness and additional applications in the world of VoIP to help drive faster adoption rates. For example, the WiFi offerings (e.g., Apple iPhone) will drive the cell phone integration application.

 

SG: Microsoft and OCS server will play a strong roll in mid to large-sized companies (over 60 employees). However, adoption rates of even Microsoft’s Exchange Server into the five to 60 employees small business market is relatively low — most small businesses can’t afford the complexity and ongoing maintenance costs. Microsoft itself predicts that the OCS server will take another 3 years to roll out in a standalone configuration. We believe that SMBs will also require a fair amount of time to become comfortable with having their phone system running on a Windows PC. Further, this market will typically not replace their phone systems at the rate of replacing their PCs.

 

We believe that MS solutions such as Office & Outlook will continue to play a primary role in the integration of communications with the company’s data and operations (e.g. TAPI integration with IP PBX systems). There is significant value in IP PBX vendors such as ourselves integrating very tightly with Microsoft Office and Outlook tools, building upon the initial start that TAPI has given us.

 

SG: Wireless communications will become the common format and it will be tightly integrated with both phone and network systems with the same reliability of wired. The wireless communications will drive the implementation of applications such as remote meeting using video, voice and data. A user’s cell phone will become their office and home phone and users will have a single phone number that they will transfer from job to job. In addition, their wireless communications both at the office and home will change the dynamics of our current work environment. The “virtual” employee of today will be the norm in the future and devices or systems that leverage voice-data-video will become as common place as e-mail is today. In fact, we’ll think of e-mail as the “old” way of communicating in the future.

 

Beyond wireless, LAN products will show strong growth in the SMB market place because many of these companies are exceeding their current capabilities. With multiple forms of communications (SIP, video, data) converging and other complex applications will drive the need for monitoring and managing (e.g., QoS, traffic shaping, VPN) devices or solutions.

RT: What sorts of things will we be hearing about during your presentation at ITEXPO?

SG: Today’s IP PBX systems are missing the market with small to medium-sized businesses in pricing, features and reliability. Allworx will teach you the (reseller) how to address these barriers and expand your business with VoIP and other opportunities (e.g., reoccurring revenue streams). This will be presented as a practical approach to building your base and building your business. So, if you have trouble selling VoIP, Allworx has found the solution and wants to share this with you.

 

SG: This is not a sales pitch on a specific product, but rather a practical and proven way for resellers to sell VoIP and expand their business.

 

SG: With nearly 4,000 systems installed and 40,000 plus users supported by a network of over 680 certified resellers, Allworx has successfully broken through the early adopter market segment and is considered the next generation phone system for all professional small to medium sized businesses.

 

SG: Hosted IP PBX solutions will be a “bust”. The end user economics, lack of flexibility, poor feature sets, and the inability of the network service providers to provide true customer technical support for the entire SMB LAN/WAN infrastructure in a scalable and profitable manner will result in slow growth of this highly publicized product category in the 10 to 100 user small business market.

September 5, 2007

Great news. Fonality FtOCC (pronounced F-Talk) Technician Certification is sold out at next week’s ITEXPO in Los Angeles, CA. There is still limited seating for the Administrator Certification. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention what this acronym means. It stands for Fonality’s trixbox Open Communications Certification. I have been hearing more and more and more buzz about what Chris Lyman and company have been up to and the momentum seems to be fantastic for the open source industry as a whole.

September 5, 2007

I recently came across a company offering video conferencing solutions at an attractive price using a leasing model instead of a direct product sale. The company is called Extreme Video Solutions and is based in Arizona. For about $3,000/month and a minimum 3-year lease you get a T1 line and a 61” monitor with unlimited video conferencing. You don’t pay extra for multipoint conferencing -- it is all included.

 

The company bills its solution as something simple and easy to use – a secure, private TV network at a reasonable price. They also tell me the quality of the system is superb. I haven’t had a chance to see it for myself as of yet.

 

One of the Extreme Video Solutions’ customers is Major League Baseball who has the solution in 90 sites and use it in contract negotiations. There are a number of other Fortune class companies using these solutions as well.

 

The system is patented in 31 countries I am told and in addition MLB has used it on a 35-point conference call for 3.5 hours with no hiccup.

 

As bandwidth is used up in multipoint conferencing the audio quality is said to hold up just fine. In addition you are able to allow access to your camera so people on the conference can control your camera remotely. You can also mute the audio and video as needed. As the number of endpoints grows you can set up conference rooms to make it easier to connect with others. In other words, instead of having to remember how to connect to 20 of these systems you can just ask the participants to meet you at 1:00 in conference room A.

 

The company is about to release a solution allowing PCs to be in on a conference call. Preliminary pricing (subject to change without notice – check the company’s site) will be a $10,000 set up fee and $19.95 per computer.

 

Extreme Video Solutions has it’s NOC in New Jersey and demo centers around the US. I haven’t had a chance to see the system in action but I look forward to doing so at some point in the future.

 

My take is we could look back at this year and say it is the year of videoconferencing. I have joked about this concept before as no year seems to be the year of videoconferencing but there really seems like a critical mass of companies selling products and services into this market. Certainly Cisco promoting telepresence does not hurt. I would love your feedback… Just meet me in conference room A at 1:00.

September 5, 2007

On May 31^st, 2007 I mentioned the Palm Foleo was doomed. Specifically I wrote the following:

 

 

I finished off the post with:

 

 

In today’s news we learn the Foleo is now being discontinued making it one of the shortest product launches to failures in history. The company is going to relaunch Foleo II at some point in the future but this is a mistake unless it is an UMPC.

September 5, 2007

There have been rumors about Business 2.0 Magazine shutting down for a while now. I heard about them a month or so ago. Now it seems the rumors were true.

 

I am sad to see the publication go. I really did like it.

 

In a way the “2.0” publications, Business 2.0, Fast Company and Industry Standard signaled a shift in the technology publishing world. The trio became the defacto advertising vehicles for tech companies in 1999 and 2000 while magazines like PC World and PC Magazine saw advertising plummet.

 

What I never understood was why.

 

You see the “PC Magazines” had lab reviews which allowed buyers to see how well a product or service worked before purchasing. The “2.0” magazines had opinion and reporting on new technology but no lab reviews.

 

I am sad to see the magazine close down and I hope all the people working on this fine publication land on their feet.