I’ve known Broadsoft’s Scott Wharton for years and after a good while discussing Broadsoft’s development of sophisticated hosting platforms, our conversations have transitioned from technology and applications to deployment. In the last few weeks for example the following customers were announced by Broadsoft:

Cbeyond, McLeodUSA, iiNET, and XO Communications.

These are some impressive wins. In addition to selling product the company has been busy trying to get the industry to rally around specs to interconnect CPE equipment with hosted services. The result is SIPconnect and it is backed by Cbeyond, Mitel, Cisco, Avaya and Centrepoint Technologies. It is a SIP based specification allowing service providers to easily inter-work with IP PBXs.

This alliance and specification shows there is the realization that companies may choose a hybrid approach to hosted services instead of throwing out CPE equipment in favor of hosted solutions. There is logic here as it seems change never comes as fast as we think in the world and intermediary (read “baby”) steps are often a smart move for companies pushing somewhat radical (but logical) technology advancements.