RAD: The Telecommunications/UC space is changing. It is a lot different than when we both got in during the heyday of the 90s. How will these changes affect channel partners?
CEO: The evolution of Cloud offerings in the UC space is changing the fundamental structure of the type of partners that are required for a successful channel. The classic VAR's face the challenge of a major change in becoming solution focused, not product focused. This also entails a change in the type of technical talent required within the VAR's to execute on their new solution offerings. A market that for more than a decade had only 5 to 10 top providers, now as the shift to cloud continues, has 30 or more providers with UCaaS offerings. With this, VAR's that navigate the change will have to focus on providing solutions that incorporate integrations to other work flows, CRM's and related solutions. On the positive side, it does allow VAR's to truly become solution providers by having the ability to easily offer multiple Cloud solutions, finding the best fit for each prospect."
Tracey continues, "As a result of these changes, many of the providers turned to alternative channels like Master Agents and Value Added Distributors (like CDW and Jenne). This opened a larger market reach than the classic VAR channel, but has compounded the problem of finding resources to deploy and support these solutions as they grow in numbers and scope."
"As we sit today there is a lot of uncertainty in the channel and lots of scrambling for solutions. Channel partners that can adapt and overcome will have plenty of opportunity and the re-occurring revenue streams should provide many opportunities for growth beyond that of the traditional VAR."
"What is really needed to succeed is the technical talent and execution of a top VAR, with the exponential sales growth opportunity of a channel like the Master Agents built for carrier services."
RAD: What have you seen that is a positive indicator?
CEO: "We see growing demand from the providers for an answer to their execution and support issues. The demand for organizations that specialize in UCaaS/CCaaS and have the required skilled engineers to successfully design, deploy and support these solutions will see tremendous opportunity. We also see growing demand for technology in the business space that can improve companies' ability to compete in their markets. We see increase value put on UCaaS and CCaaS solutions as a key for organizations to succeed. It opens lots of opportunities for those organizations that are ready to take on the challenge of these changes."
RAD: How do you see the Contact-Center-as-a-Service space evolving?
CEO: "I see the CCaaS space evolving ahead of the UCaaS space. Contact Centers are often the heartbeat of an organization and its key factors - revenue and service. The more organizations realize that Contact Center productivity is a driver for their business, the more demand we see for the business applications/features to be built in to the Contact Center solution. The line between CRM and CCaaS is blurring as more companies demand integrated access to multiple communication channels and data sources. And today it's true not only for bigger business players but also for SMBs."
"There's a very limited number of competitive premise-based Contact Center offerings in the small-to-medium market. Cloud solutions are stepping forward bringing top-level Contact Center functionality to this market along with the reliability, scalability, continuous software advancement and next to zero hardware requirements. Smaller contact centers now can afford to operate on the same level as business monsters with less risk and more opportunities to grow."
Tracey adds, "We see some big SaaS CRM platforms presenting themselves as Contact Centers to play as CCaaS solutions but they are still lacking lots of expected Contact Center functions and they lack the ability to route interactions from multiple channels effectively. They face a step climb to catch up to the rapidly expanding feature/application sets of specific CCaaS solutions. At this point in time with some many of the CCaaS players offering integrations into these big SaaS platforms and having open API's for continued advanced integrations. It just makes more sense for CCaaS to be integrated into complete CRM than the opposite."
Tracey remarks, "When it comes to the channel, CCaaS business is a great source of MRR revenue. The average CCaaS deal will have a Top Line of 4x to 5x in comparison with UCaaS, and it is still a field with fewer players. MSPs, VARs and Agents who see the writing on the wall about declining top line revenue in their carrier business should really start considering CCaaS as an alternative."
]]>Then the announcement came that GTT had picked off Giglinx Global, a wholesale reseller of IP and network. Details were not disclosed, but revenue was assessed at $16M.
This morning, GTT announced that they were buying Global Capacity from Pivotal Group. [Pivotal Group acquired GC from Bankruptcy in 2011.] "Under the terms of the agreement, GTT will pay $100 million in cash and issue 1.85 million shares of GTT common stock, to the sellers at closing. GTT said it expects that Global Capacity's annualized revenue will be about $200 million at close," according to the press release.
GTT is a stew consisting of WBS Connect, PacketExchange, N-layer, Tinet, UNSi, MegaPath, One Source Networks, Hibernia, and these 3. It has a Tier 1 network according to Dyn. And it is looking more and more like GTT is the new Level3, as L3 goes quietly into the closet of CenturyLink.
Rick Calder, GTT president and CEO has repeatedly expressed that he expects GTT to achieve the "financial objectives of $1 billion in revenue and $250 million in Adjusted EBITDA."
No idea what the magic is with $1B in revenue for the sake of it. Intermedia Communications hit the Billion dollar mark in 2000 - and collapsed in 2001 selling to Verizon. PAETEC hit $1B in revenue before being scooped up by Windstream. No clear idea who would buy GTT if they hit $1B in revenue.
GTT's revenue last quarter were $182.4 million, which is $700 million annuallized. Add in GC at $200M and GTT will almost hit a billion in revenue (with a billion in matching debt by the way.)
Another company striving to reach a Billion first is RingCentral. (I think Vonage will hit it first, since they have Consolidated Revenues of $243 Million in the last quarter. Vonage Business revenues are expected to be $486M in 2017.) RC's quarterly report says Total revenue grew 29% year-over-year to $111.8 million. This makes RC revenue about $450M, a little behind VB.
RC's CEO Vlad Shmunis says, "As we look ahead, we are excited about the market opportunity for cloud communications as enterprise customers empower their global and distributed workforce to work anywhere, any time, and on any device. This market transition will fuel our growth to $1bn by 2020."
RC is riding high after Synergy Research marked them as a Leader in the 3 spaces of UCaaS: Retail, Wholesale and Cloud Comms.
"With a 19% market share by revenue, RingCentral is growing twice as fast as the overall UCaaS market, according to Synergy Research." So where does that put VB? It isn't even listed. RC is followed by 8x8, Mitel and ShoreTel in the report. That's why I just love analyst reports. P2P Baby! P2P!
I wish instead of spotlighting the revenue, they could spotlight customer care, trouble free deployment, retention, and ease of doing business. Instead it is a race for revenue, gobbling up companies, and a mess to deal with. Integration is a Myth in Telecom. It is smoke and mirrors with duct tape, foil and pink slips.
]]>Sangoma is paying $3M in cash plus about another million in stock and options for VoIP Supply. It borrowed the money. If VoIP Supply is adding C$15m ($11.3M US), then the $4M price tag is pretty decent.
SYNNEX is buying Westcon-Comstor's $2.18 billion North American and Latin America businesses for as much as $830M.
Ingram bought NETXUSA for $55M upfront and $10M in earn out for $125M in revenue, according to the 10Q filing in April 2016.
Slim margins in distribution. Slim margins in hardware. The slightly bigger margins are in services.
Sangoma also purchased FreePBX/Schmooze in 2015.
Maybe the parts business of VoIP isn't enough. Maybe they need to be selling bundles, services, maintenance, etc. Maybe VoIP Supply is a good next progression after FreePBX.
]]>I know we are facing TDM sunset but from the looks of advertising from the likes of Birch and Bullseye, POTS is still alive and well - and profitable! POTS is still the reliable choice when it comes to voice lines for alarms, elevators and faxes.
For many scenarios, an on-premise PBX makes more sense than a haphazardly deployed Hosted VoIP scenario. Many a small business replaces POTS with SIP trunks to get mileage out of their aged key system. Switching to a new cloud PBX is not a viable option for some small offices because they don't want to change behavior. Hosted VoIP does a poor job on key system emulation despite years of partners selling it and providers trying to deliver it. It is one big face palm.
If PBX were indeed dead, wouldn't one of the leading UC companies have 1 million seats by now? Instead they are struggling to get to 700K seats.
The problem with UC is that it is mass market and it would be better off verticalized.
It would be better for all if Broadsoft wasn't competing directly with its own customers by selling direct to users at $15 per seat. That smells of desperation.
Someone asked me what I meant by that. Broadsoft selling direct cuts out their 400+ clients - like Vonage, TPX & Nextiva. Now these providers have to face price compression from their vendor. It's like ISPs and CLEcs who buy wholesale from ILECs and cablecos only to see retail rates are cheaper than their wholesale rates. Isn't that a crock?
BSFT can't add any more clients because every carrier on the planet has already picked a softswitch - BSFT, Meta, Netsapiens, or home brew. The only way to maintain revenue is to sell direct. BSFT isn't exactly raising the ocean or expanding the pie. They are just taking a big bite from the pie that their clients have been baking for 10+ years. Sure, everyone says that cloud comms is starting to take off; that it is hitting high adoption, but is it the UC we have seen or a bunch of variety?
Office 365, Cisco Spark, Dialpad, One Talk, Fuze, Shoretel, 8x8, RingCentral, Grasshopper, Mitel, Avaya, Jive, Intelepeer <- that is a lot of variety under the UC umbrella. With 2000+ providers of some form of UC in the US, even with an accelerated pace of adoption by users, will there be a clear winner soon? Probably not.
In fact, all these choices without a clear winner probably helps Microsoft more than anyone. When in doubt buy from the established.
There are factors: it isn't a replacement system so much as a change. Extra gear is required (POE switches, QoS Router). It isn't as reliable as POTS - and can't be used in all places POTS was. The call quality is often not clear (unless you put it up against cell phones). (It's why they are touting SD-WAN for UC). It isn't cheaper than POTS in many cases. The deployments are often messy. (Providers can barely turn up Internet Access without issues let alone something complicated like Hosted PBX.)
And finally it doesn't pay much in commissions. At $15 per seat and even a 20 seat deal, the MRR is $300. That is a big headache for $300 in billing revenue. Easier, faster and better to sell network still. Or POTS. Or on-premise PBX with higher compensation. 3CX has been doing everything to make a partner's business model sing.
This isn't me being a Pessimist. This is me being a Realist. This is just how it is in the street in many places.
I don't hear anyone hawking white glove service or money back guarantee or no headache install. I hear the talk of zero touch deployment. That's the wrong way to go except for the CFO who wants to maximize profit per contract. Customer experience is someone else's domain.
I don't hear anyone talking about their call quality, their customer experience, their hand holding on deployment, their world class PMO. These are better things to talk about than price and features.
]]>Private equity firm, TPG, last year acquired RCN and Grande. Now they are grabbing Wave Broadband in the Northwest for $2.36B. They will combine all 3 - Wave, Grande and RCN - to make a larger MSO. The PR says that they will be the 6th largest MSO, leap-frogging Altice. Altice owns Suddenlink and Cablevision. Comcast and AT&T have 22M and 25M respectively. The Top 4 all have more than 10M pay TV subs. After that it is splitting hairs with VZ at 4.6M to Altice with 3.6M at number 7. TPG's exit strategy will likely be Altice buying them.
WISP Redzone claims it has developed a "fixed wireless spectrum aggregation technology that can support broadband speeds of up to 400 Mbps per customer", according to press. Google Fiber must be excited.
Mitel has been making noise since early last year when it tried to buy Polycom. Now it is scooping up the assets that Toshiba is leaving behind as Toshiba exits the phone business.
Mitel also announced that it had broken 3 million users. According to investor presentations, Mitel has 3.2 million cloud users but only 588,000 recurring seats. To put that into perspective, Microsoft found 25 million subscribers for Office 365 (although the take rate is slowing to 900K per quarter). Broadsoft claims 15M cloud lines but that includes SIP trunks. Vonage is over 600K seats and 8x8 is close to that.
The details can be found in the 2017 Hosted VoIP/UC Market Report for the US, which was just released. See here.
Jive Software was acquired for $462M. That is a social collaboration software company based in Portland; not the UCaaS provider out of Utah called Jive Communications.
Amazon released Chime (a Webex clone) and cloud contact center. Now with Alexa devices it is taking over the speakerphone market. A few VoIP companies have integrated into Alexa for voice enabled dialing (something we need in cars!). Only a matter of time before Amazon gets into the dial-tone replacement game in conjunction with Twilio.
Panterra Networks doesn't do marketing. It's a shame really. They have a better than average UC application that is secure (encrypted), HIPAA compliant and 24/7 hack monitored. It produces one contact management file without duplicates. Added Teams with the release of Streams, which integrates UC, team messaging, file sharing and analytics into a single customizable platform. Worth a look.
]]>At EC17, Amazon launched a self-serve cloud contact center. (Once again Amazon took software it created and used internally and made it a commercial product like S3 and AWS.) The partner for this was Twilio. This seems like a slight to Vonage, who owns Nexmo, a twilio competitor.
There is a rumor that Amazon is looking to buy Vonage. There was an offer from Oracle to buy 8x8, so there are folks outside of telecom looking to buy VoIP companies.
A couple of ITSPs, Skyswitch and RingByName, are offering integration with Alexa. Alexa makes a nice speakerphone. Again this is a nice marketing gimmick but it doesn't solve any real business problems.
Vonage's market cap this morning is $1.4B, the same as 8x8 whose stock price is more than twice Vonage's. I wonder how much longer these two companies can keep the machine of growth going. Keeping up 24%+ growth every quarter is a grind. It begs the question what happens when that slips to 19 or 20 percent? They probably won't be stand-alone companies at that point.
In some ways, Amazon is like Twilio; it doesn't want to be a phone company, but it wants to capture as much value in that space that it can without being one. It would be smarter for Amazon to buy Twilio, but the market cap is twice that of Vonage. What does that say about VoIP stocks?
]]>In the business market, Alexa is integrated with Skyswitch, a Netsapiens softswitch operator.
Better Late than Never: Amazon's Unified Communications Starts with 'Chime' by Edgewater Networks.
Interesting look at Hosted PBX seat pricing at CP online.
Seth Godin asks, "Learn something new and difficult and valuable." Why? "There are people who can cut corners better than you, work more hours than you and certainly work cheaper than you. But what would happen if you became the person who was smarter, better at solving problems and cared the most?"
47% of jobs are at risk for being automated in the next 20 years (faster probably). The only way to stay relevant is "Solve interesting problems"; Consultatively Sell Solutions; and utilize Creative Thinking.
FTTH Council has changed their name to the Fiber Broadband Association.
Windstream is making big waves as it fights against industry consolidation that may make it less relevant. WIND complained about Level3 not paying its bills. Now they are worried that the mergers will strand small business during the TDM-to-IP transition. This is all gamesmanship to get concessions favorable to themselves.
BTW, no one wants to buy Cogent.
Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners has closed a deal to become majority owner of the data center and interconnection company, COLOGIX, which runs 24 data centers in North America. So the data center market is still hot!
]]>After 15 years, 2000+ providers can only take a 28% handhold in the market?
The growth rate of Hosted PBX (HPBX/UC/UCaaS) has always been a hopeful bad guess. And it will continue to do so because too many people, companies and dollars have been invested thus far for any analyst to turn on the sector.
There are 4 major problems with the UC Market.
One, PBX sales have declined about 3% per year. Even Avaya going bankrupt isn't going to speed that up. Not only do people trust boxes; they are cheaper in the long run. Single location businesses, which is most of them, don't have a PBX problem that UC solves. There is a current Product/Market MisMatch that needs to be examined.
Mobile UC may get more traction. Or a simple PBX like Dialpad or Fone.do. Gary Kim writes that the market may be too small. At ARPU of $400, it takes a bunch of sales to move a needle for a company like CenturyLink, Verizon, AT&T, Comcast or Charter.
Two, I wrote this last week. Any 15 year old product needs a re-fresh or re-think. We are overdue for a Re-Think. Slack was a re-think, but that strays to the edges of what UC is. So does Cloud Contact Center. And these companies want to be everything for 1-1000 employees. This isn't Pasta or Rice. This is technology.
UC is Change. People hate change. The Channel doesn't sell Change; we take orders on replacement services. Harsh but mainly true. There are exceptions of course, but the general rule is that agents are transactional. Even Inter-Connects aren't excited to go sell a cloud service. MSPs will if it is white-label and can be bundled into their package, but that falls into POTS Replacement more than a full-blown UC deployment.
Three, HPBX has 2 camps of buyers: POTS replacement sold as cheap as possible and actual UCaaS. Where do you think most of the market is? Right, cheap VoIP.
Now if I am buying cheap VoIP, am I also going to pay for a backup circuit or SD-WAN or any other service enhancement or assurance? Unlikely -- or I wouldn't be buying cheap cable broadband and the cheapest OTT voice!!!
If the buyer spends more on bandwidth, has a backup circuit, they are likely going to buy UC as BC/DR and that isn't cheap VoIP.
The fourth Big Problem: There are far too many providers! Telarus represents at least 37 HPBX vendors. Other masters have at least 25. How does anyone differentiate/ stand out/ position in a marketplace where the cloud broker has a choice of 2000+ providers?
This becomes a problem for the providers who enter into a Price War (seats cratering to below $15 each) and a SPIFF War, where providers are literally buying sales.
One of the most successful HPBX providers, 8x8, is up for sale. This move comes after a recent re-branding as a Global UCaaS provider.
Are the owners (the 8x8 founders still own most of the voting stock) looking to exit? Or is it that the machine to keep bringing in 20% growth quarter after quarter is grinding down? I just don't know who would pay $1.5 Billion for 8x8. VZ payed $1.8 for XO which owned fiber assets. WIND payed $1.1B in an all stock deal for EarthLink, who also had a bunch of fiber. Fiber gets a bigger multiple than VoIP.
The other thought is that what if $300M is about all the B2B annual revenue you can get?
From a recent discussion about Amazon Chime: there are approximately 100 million phone/conferencing lines in North America. If Amazon Chime with Vonage can hit a 5% share of this market, that equates to 5 million subs. At $5/seat/month, that is $300M incremental revenue opportunity for Vonage. That would be a needle mover for most UC Provider, considering 8x8 is at $225M in annual revenue now.
The emphasis has always been on multi-location and mid-market. That's why "41% of larger enterprises are using cloud UC services." Now everyone is focused there (upmarket). However, the bulk of the businesses are single location small business (20 million of them). That means a new product bundle is needed to attract this crowd. Many thing that this sector will be mobile only with an auto-attendant in the cloud.
When you look at the large number of messaging apps, at some point, one of them - Slack, Messenger, WeChat, HipChat - will hit the right bundle of functions to steal mass appeal. Not yet, but maybe soon.
]]>I spoke with a few VoIP executives including CoreDial at ITEXPO. There are two separate layers: cheap voice or POTS replacement and people who want a comms platform.
Most aren't using the full suite since they have Slack, Messenger, WhatsApp, etc. They have Office365 or Google for Work. It is a siloed approach to a comms suite.
Price points are decreasing. But then they had to since UCaaS is costing more than a SIP trunk and a small business PBX (think 3CX, FreePBX, Asterisk).
There aren't that many multi-location businesses. (And everyone is chasing them!)
There are more businesses with remote workers. There are also more workers with consultants, contractors and freelancers who are outside the federation of the enterprise system. How do they fit into the organizations' communications?
Coredial turns all features on when they sell off the Broadsoft platform. This way users know about features that they may not have been aware of, like voicemail to email or text to email.
There is training for users - and later due to employee turnover, more training for users. This is but one way to ensure that the customer's organization is getting the full benefit of UCaaS. Otherwise they could have bought the cheaper version!
Everyone is talking about softphones (especially Broadsoft and Counterpath!) Yet there were many new phone/handset vendors at the show. [There also were a couple of VoIP endpoint vendors who had devices very similar to Doorbot! ]
Are you using a softphone on your laptop/desktop/tablet? I'd be curious who is - other than folks who actually work at the VoIP provider!
8x8 is pivoting to Global! I guess they think they have taken all the share they can in the US. Or it is getting too expensive to acquire a customer in the US!
Maybe I am jaded because I have been staring at the VoIP World since 2002.I have waiting for the tidal wave of adoption but small business after small business are pretty happy with a key system, which despite the argument to the contrary is not the value of a Hosted VoIP solution (to see Key System Emulation is UGH!!!!)
I saw quite a few new logos that offer VoIP/UC. Consolidation news has quieted down. Current UC providers have to get - not only better at selling seats - but more efficient at selling them. Velocity has to happen. Yet to have that happen, the provider has to take more friction out of the sales process. The provider has to narrow its focus on who it can best serve and why - and target better for faster conversion.
During my discussion with Coredial. we talked about the market - actually we talked about the fact that the market of 1-500 employees is more like 7 markets with 7 different buying personas. UC is still triggered by an event more often than not, says Coredial. Moving, expanding, shrinking, acquiring -- these business events for the organization warrant a look at shifting from premise to Cloud Comm.
The market segments need to be addressed. The messaging, the targeting, etc. Considering many service providers barely have marketing in place for one persona, how will they market to 5 or 7 segments while addressing even half that many buyer personas?
I often talk verticals, but I also know that channel partners HAVE segmented the providers. "We use this one for 1-5 seats and this one for up to 20, etc."
It is unlikely that a partner will use the same provider for 10 seats as for 150 seats. It would be a white whale.
Just some food for thought.
One more thought: with Net Neutrality going away fast, what do OTT VoIP players do?
]]>Google Fiber stopped over-building fiber to the home (FTTH) to give fixed gigabit wireless a chance. This isn't even 5G. This is current non-millimeter tech.
AT&T is trying to get BPL (broadband over power lines) to work with Project AirGig. Will it work this time? The power infrastructure is still pretty old/antiquated, ut technology has gotten better.
API isn't talked about like that. Integrations are. UCaaS as a stand-alone platform is not that impactful to the employee work day. Integrated with CRM, email and other work day applications is. [All About API is at ITEXPO.]
Intelepeer just announced a platform that integrates with Cisco Spark. Hope they demo that at ITEXPO.
The IDEA Showcase is Thursday evening. I always get amped at startup events because there is great energy (hope, promise, excitement) that we kind of lack in telecom.
If you like startup stuff, the week of Feb. 13 is Startup Week! Techstars runs that globally.
Channel Vision Expo is collocated with ITEXPO again. This is the first channel partners event of the year. And it is collocated with MSP Expo. Should be interesting because more and more referrals and indirect sales are making a difference for cloud providers. 8x8 notes, "New monthly recurring revenue (MRR) sold to mid-market and enterprise customers and by channel sales teams accounted for 60% of total new MRR booked in the quarter."
I don't understand Blockchain. (There I said it!) Maybe I will get a chance to see what that is about on the show floor next week as well at the Blockchain Event.
WebRTC is still a thing, according to Andy Abramson. We'll see as Real Time Web Solutions has a section of the ITEXPO as well.
Most of the noise in my email is about HPBX/UCaaS, SD-WAN or IOT. The IOT Evolution is happening at the same time in Ft Lauderdale but it is a separate show. Verizon, Amazon, Gogo, Sprint, T-Mobile, Cisco (but no AT&T) are speaking and/or exhibiting.
That is a lot of tech to take in at one time, but it also in one place. Where can you get that much info/demo/prezo in one place?
Some interesting stats from 451 Research Group.
Overall IT Spending vs. Cloud Spending. Cloud spending remains strong, and the growth rate continues to outpace overall IT spending. A total of 44% of cloud users expect spending to increase over the next 90 days, while 4% expect a decrease. In comparison, 38% expect an increase in their overall IT spending vs. 11% expecting a decrease.
Cloud Adoption. SaaS (64%, up 1-pt) remains the most popular type of cloud computing in use, followed by Infrastructure as a Service (43%, up 4-pts) and On-Premises Private Cloud (34%, down 2-pts).
On-Premises Private Cloud Vendors. The most popular vendor for on-premises private cloud is VMware vCloud (65%), with Cisco (33%) and Microsoft Cloud OS (30%) a more distant second and third.
Key Attributes. The most important attributes for on-premises private cloud vendors are Platform Reliability (66%), followed by Value for Money/Cost (47%) and Technical Expertise (36%).
If you are in Ft Lauderdale next week, let's grab coffee! Or join us for dinner on 2/7 HERE.
]]>With less than 25% of businesses on VoIP according to TechNova Consulting, then there is still time to make them relevant again.
Meanwhile Verizon is asking the FCC for permission to shutter more legacy SS7 voice switches. The TDM to IP transition is marching on. Frame Relay and ATM are mothballed. Soon SS7 as we are used to will be. I wonder if 9-1-1 centers have caught up yet?
AT&T told the FCC that "AT&T is progressing with its TDM-to-IP voice service transition in two cities in Florida and Alabama, telling the FCC that on a combined basis 50% of total customer accounts have voluntarily migrated to one of the telco's next-gen wireline and wireless voice services." [source]
OTT communications is growing so wide that it is now being reported on by analysts! "The VoIP market (e.g., Microsoft Skype), the IP messaging market (e.g., WhatsApp), a portion of the social networking advertising market (e.g., Facebook), Unified Communications (e.g., Cisco) and Cloud communications markets (e.g., Twillio) make up the OTT communication market." [source]
Broadsoft has 38% of the global UC market with 15 million UC lines, but that isn't a significant portion of the global business voice market. The analysts have now estimated CAGR in UCaaS at just 10% (down from the 20+% they were cheerleading for a few years ago).
Riddle me this: If the IP transition is going so well, how is the growth so slow (<10%) and the market penetration so small (15M = 38% or <25% of biz) when there are so many VoIP Providers out there?
]]>TOS: "If you provide Feedback to Net2Phone, then you grant Net2Phone a worldwide, non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty free, fully paid up right to publicly display, broadcast, transmit and distribute the Feedback (and derivative works thereof), including but not limited to Your name and company name for attribution purposes. During the beta trial period, You will receive 1000 free inbound minutes per month calculated from the date of sign-up; provided that, if You do not use a minimum of 25 minutes per month, then Net2Phone reserves the right to close Your Account. Once Your free minutes have been used during a month, Services will be suspended until the next month begins. Net2Phone may terminate your beta trial service for any reason or no reason without prior notice. Once the beta trial period ends, Your free 1000 minute per month plan will automatically convert into the then-commercially available 100 minute free plan."
It looks like they are just lab testing. A 100 minute inbound plan seems like it would be for a very small business. That's less than 2 hours per month. Oh, well.
They did buy some functionality via the acquisition of LiveNinja. "Net2phone will combine LiveNinja's customer messaging and live chat service with PicuP, which gives small/mid-size businesses a self-service platform to deal with inbound calls, including auto-attendants, customized welcomes and voicemail to e-mail."
"LiveNinja offers a messaging application that facilitates companies and their customers having seamless conversations across multiple messaging and chat channels including live chat, SMS and Facebook Messenger," according to SeekingAlpha. Riddle me this: why would Google Voice service with 100 inbound free minutes need multi-platform chat integration? It seems that this should have been integrated into Net2Phone's Hosted VoIP offering instead of the stripped down PicUp service. It is a crowded space. Not sure they have product-market fit yet.
A similar service to PicUp launched from 3 VoIP veterans. David Walsh and Evin Hunt (from Shango); and Jason Tapolci (from VoIP Innovations) just soft launched their hosted VoIP service that is a mobile app only called Vocaly.
Launching an offering isn't cheap but it isn't that expensive either. There needs to be more experimentation in the space. A bunch of failures before we get some new, fresh ideas that work.
I give Verizon credit there because One Talk is an experiment with their Broadsoft platform that is powering other traditional offerings. We need IDT, Verizon and start-ups like Vocaly and Fone.do to experiment and see what happens.
]]>In UC&C (and most software) "CIOs will be buying into the customer experience and not the technology," writes RingCentral's Sahil Rekhi."In 2017, CIOs will be buying communication solutions with a focus on experiences rather than technology; removing distinctions between communication, collaboration and productivity. Workplace communication and collaboration tools in the cloud will be made to create a unified and consistent experience across multiple devices, moving businesses away from a siloed approach to communications." Most ITSPs are not set up for the complete mobile experience yet, let alone a full UC&C CX (customer experience).
There are providers still trying to add analytics to call logs. Because we are still stuck on replacement instead of impact, outcome or experience. (One reason that Slack took off: UX!)
GOOD READS:
Fred Wilson's frank look at what will happen in 2017.
Start the new year with better sales meetings HERE.
PR trends in 2017. Content versus Attention versus Influencers = Viewers running away to the "Dark Social", "the amount of communication which occurs behind closed doors and messaging apps and private groups."
Sales Hacker's Top 10 Trends & Predictions Heading Into 2017.
This is a twofer: 5 lessons from the book LinkedIn's head of recruiting recommends to all new managers is a summary of Ryan Holiday's book.
Are you hiring? Good read on what to look for. I always say Attitude first, but this CEO says have a meal with the candidate and look for Gratitude and excitement.
MEDIA PAIN
Medium has laid off one-third its staff. Medium is a blogging/media platform founded by the same guy who founded Blogger, Odeo and twitter. He is having an issue with business models as the world of the Internet is based on free. No idea why he didn't try charging $9.99 per year per reader or some other nominal amount. It isn't a volume shop like Huffington or Buzzfeed. It has a targeted audience. But that is the problem: everyone uses the model that they see, not one designed specifically for their product.
As Seth Godin pointed out, "Newspapers won Pulitzer prizes for telling us things we didn't want to hear. We've responded by not buying newspapers any more." That is why we have click-bait, fake news, struggling newspapers and uneducated voters. It is all about the pageview, even in this content marketing world. Go figure!
RETAIL SUFFERS!
Sears is closing 150 more stores. Macys is closing stores. Retail had a bad holiday season - and the stock market is unforgiving. American Apparel is BK (and Amazon is trying to buy it.) Retail has to change. Big time. Also, malls have to re-think what they are to consumers.
Fast food is hiring robots and self-serve kiosks; retail is tanking. What will teenagers do for employment? What will many others do for employment in place of managers, buyers, maintenance, etc.
Ford is staying. Carrier is staying but they got tax breaks and other bonuses to do so. And they are going to automate those jobs out of existence. AI is replacing some fund managers. If you can't fix or code a robot, what will you do for a job?
]]>Wood corrected that Velocloud decided not to sell direct but to use a variety of service providers as sales partners. These partners could be VARs or MSPs or LECs. Many providers formerly known as CLECs, like TelePacific, Mettel, EarthLink and Global Capacity, have chosen VeloCloud. So has AT&T.
Wood says each provider is rolling out SD-WAN by adding Velocloud to its own network sauce. Personally, I don't think that helps the SD-WAN term gain definition, but we'll see.
ITSPs (VoIP Providers) are also rolling out SD-WAN. Some are using Velocloud (Vonage and Mitel); others are using other vendors including SimpleWAN. It improves call quality measurably.
In the case of Vonage, they are using Velocloud technology to leave a box on-site to perform MOS scoring and monitor the call quality in the first month. Then Vonage can go back to the customer to say that the Internet performance is the issue and with SmartWAN (Vonage brand name) the call quality will improve starting now. (The white SDN box is already on-site doing monitoring and testing. Now it just gets turned up and billing begins.)
Quality + Transparency + Monitoring is what Velocloud is offering. Analytics will come later.
Velocloud has 600 customers through 150 partners, but not all providers are past the pilot stage, so Wood tells me it is more than 4 deals per partner.
Wood said that EarthLink is spinning the SD-WAN story different with its SD-WAN Concierge service.
The story of SD-WAN has to be more than spun. It needs clarity of value and differentiation. Wood pointed out that Cisco has moved into the space (iWAN) as a vendor to LECs and as a provider. Also, WAN Optimization specialists like Riverbed are spinning into the space - but without really evolving.
The benefits of SD-WAN extend from simple WAN management to zero touch provisioning to SaaS/App Performance. In between, there are features for remediation, leveraging economical broadband, and mu;ti-path/best link path determination (packet traffic cop). The MOS scoring agent is what the ITSPs like. The features don't change; it is all about how the provider packages the software (Velocloud or Broadsoft). The new year will bring more buzz and more spin. Stay tuned.
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