Is the world ready to buy their IP PBXs from Costco? We are about to find out as the warehouse club with 537 worldwide stores and over 51 million card holders will be carrying Syspine/Microsft's Response Point, the entry level PBX that is not short on features like mobility and speech recognition support.
My take? This is a great trial for Microsoft and its partners but I am not sure that every small business is ready to deploy an IP communications phone system without the aid of a reseller or technical person. Then again, the typical SMB is likely deploying more and more technology these days without reseller assistance.
It will certainly be interesting to watch how sales are and how much space Costco devotes to these products. I did a quick calculation by the way and it seems the average Costco store is 141,000 square feet and there are 393 stores in the US. That means Response Point will share space with juice, food, stereos, etc. in a total of over 55 million square feet of retail space. Wow! that is a lot of shopping space. Now I know why it takes me so long to get in and out of this retail giant's stores.
My take? This is a great trial for Microsoft and its partners but I am not sure that every small business is ready to deploy an IP communications phone system without the aid of a reseller or technical person. Then again, the typical SMB is likely deploying more and more technology these days without reseller assistance.
It will certainly be interesting to watch how sales are and how much space Costco devotes to these products. I did a quick calculation by the way and it seems the average Costco store is 141,000 square feet and there are 393 stores in the US. That means Response Point will share space with juice, food, stereos, etc. in a total of over 55 million square feet of retail space. Wow! that is a lot of shopping space. Now I know why it takes me so long to get in and out of this retail giant's stores.
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I was kind of surprised by this announcement. Just seems to "cheapen" the brand and take money out of Partner's pockets.
Not to mention, the minute one of these small businesses hooks up the system on a "less than perfect" network and it performs badly, they're gonna bad mouth the product.
There is allot of chatter going on in the SMB community about Microsoft's decision to sell Response Point directly to the user in COSTCO stores. Many SMB consultants view this as "cutting them out" move. Personally I think that it will create more calls for service and help for the Response Point System. Don't forget, Norton Anti-Virus, AVG, and Panda, didn't kill the Anti-Virus business either. Customers just get in the water a little deeper and need saving from a whole new set of problems and newly created needs.
So I say, have no fear! Become and expert on Microsoft Response Point and sell yourself as a valuable expert consultant to this new frontier product.
We also have several siscussions going on in our forum on this on http://www.telephonation.com
Response Point Partner Town Hall Meeting - Questions & Answers
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Have you ever benefited by costco selling the Syspine Response Point phone system?
I will refer people to your ITEMS. Effective use of Wordpress had some exceptional. This looks good! Really good tutorial include so many helpful informations!
Cheers