Growth Areas: Message received on unified communications

Trade

1 April 2013

In the latest of a regular series of articles seeking to identify growth areas for channel partners in 2013, Irish Computer asked a number of resellers, distributors and vendors for their views on the opportunities presented by unified communications.

Steve Docherty, commercial & partner manager, Cisco Ireland
Unified communications can provide major opportunities for resellers, Docherty says, providing they approach it in the right way. He highlights the ability to add rich functionality and cost-effective services for customers on the back of IP telephony "which can deepen and lengthen the relationship". With the right partners, the channel can also "respond to increased customer interest in reducing capital expenditure and accessing business communication services through the cloud".

While IP telephony was originally implemented as a cost-cutting strategy, there is an opportunity for the channel to fully understand and appreciate customer needs and offer appropriate productivity-based unified communications (UC) services.

"These can range from virtual meetings on shared desktops through services like WebEx to video communications across all devices," he says. The growth is reflected in statistics such as the 1.2 billion meeting minutes per month hosted on WebEx and the 1 million TelePresence endpoints deployed.

Different verticals will have different priorities, Docherty adds. In the public sector, departments are looking at using video as an alternative medium to travel. In education, it provides the ability to embrace remote expertise and collaborative learning. In the health sector, the government is promoting centres of excellence rather than trying to spread expertise across too many locations. "The use of video technology to distribute that expertise is obvious and a growing trend internationally," he notes.

UC can also be offered by resellers as a cloud service, in tandem with distributors such as Sharptext. "This cuts the capital expenditure for their customers, deepens the long-term relationship, brings the dealer into the cloud market and provides a more reliable and regular revenue stream," Docherty argues.

But he warns resellers to make sure they adopt the right approach. "For example, with the unstoppable force of bring your own device (BYOD) there is no benefit in partnering with a vendor which specialises in one platform," he claims. "As Cisco does not produce or sell a smartphone or a tablet it is platform independent in this regard."

Mark Wheeler, director, Cisco business unit, Azlan UK and Ireland
UC has been talked up as an area of strong growth for some time and it looks like it’s finally happening, Wheeler says. "Cisco is really getting behind this whole area with a strong emphasis and investment placed on driving sales of its Unified Communications Manager (previously known as CallManager) solution."

Customers are actively seeking out UC solutions but they tend to do so because they are driven by cost or regulation. "It’s much easier for financial services companies to introduce call recording for example, if everything is IP-based. It is much more cost-effective for a support or response centre to make use of UC to bring e-mail, IM, SMS and voice all together, so that agents can view and control all of these connections on screen. They can be much more productive and responsive that way."

The earliest adopters of UC tended to be larger or mid-sized organisations because most SMBs did not recognise the need to bring data and voice connections. "They tend to adopt the ‘if it’s not broke, why fix it’ stance," Wheeler acknowledges. "UC can deliver real efficiency gains and great cost-savings, even for quite small organisations, but it needs to be sold into those customers, the benefits need to be demonstrated," he adds.

It’s important for resellers to get educated and qualified to sell Cisco UCM, he argues. Azlan is preparing to launch its Momentum programme to give resellers access to resources for UCM and other Cisco Architectures. "We’ve also invested in training our own teams, so Azlan now has fully qualified Solutions Architects and sales people on UCM and other Cisco Architectures," he reveals.

Having gone through the peak of the hype cycle and early-adopter phase, "UC is now very much on a long steady climb and this is the right time for resellers to start learning about it, engaging with someone who can support their efforts and taking the message to their SMB customers," Wheeler concludes.

Owen Kirwan, unified communications specialist, Datapac
"We’re seeing huge opportunities due to the current trend towards mobile working and BYOD," Kirwan reports. UC solutions can make mobile devices a secure extension of the corporate network enabling employees to be more productive, whether in or out of the office setting.

Although UC has been around for over a decade, it is more accessible and affordable than ever before. Cloud-based UC systems are also likely to become more prevalent, he predicts, due to increased connection speeds, more reliability, widely accessible internet connections and a wide range of attractive benefits such as little or no initial capital outlay.

Kirwan argues the proliferation of tablet PCs and smartphones has changed the expectations of SMB owners and managers in Ireland. "While previously there was a reluctance to invest in replacing existing PBX systems, the benefits of UC are now more widely known and more difficult to ignore. The efficiency and productivity benefits of well-connected teams are enhanced by an integrated UC system."

He believes the ability to improve productivity and efficiency through better flexibility and mobility, and speedier communications, makes UC attractive to Irish SMBs. "There are significant cost savings to be made by utilising UC features including inter-site communication, SIP-enabled international calling, instant messaging and presence," Kirwan says. "Benefits for managers include integration with third party CRM solutions and comprehensive reporting. Users no longer need to work from their desk."

A lot of clients with end-of-life first generation VoIP systems that are more than 10 years old are approaching Datapac. "There are also plenty of opportunities with SMBs and start-ups that have yet to invest in their communications infrastructures and are in a position to gain all the benefits of UC straight away," Kirwan adds.

John Conlon, enterprise sales manager, Sharptext
There’s a significant opportunity at the SME end of the market if UC is delivered as a service with a managed service type approach and at a lower cost than people are currently paying, Conlon reveals. No big vendor owns that market at this stage, so it is still open to players that are nimble and agile.

At the high end, there’s a huge amount of impetus around video, he observes. Sharptext has an agreement with a managed service company aligned with Cisco (called UCI2I) to help drive video into companies that can’t afford the infrastructure.

"Companies want to incorporate video into their overall strategy," Conlon argues. The majority of traffic on the Internet is video at the moment and increasingly, companies trying to reach suppliers and customers in territories like China need video conferencing at a reasonable price that is enterprise grade and professionally run.

"There’s quite a latent demand there," Conlon says. He’s confident there is a partner base to support the move to video. "Putting video together with UC involves skills from both sides and we have a number of partners who would be quite experienced with UC and video," Conlon says.

The main players in UC are Cisco, Avaya and Nortel, but Microsoft Lync is seeing quite a bit of activity, he adds, with quite a number of partners being successful in bringing it to market.

UC has been most successful when offered to SMEs as a managed service (typically for companies with 50 users and below). Partners have been prepared to build on the Cisco brand and bundle it with their service. There is significant interest in the SME market.

Cisco’s small business offerings can provide huge savings to a small partner, Conlon claims. It has "a very good offering around management" with a low cost means for partners to remotely manage customer networks with its Onplus device. The device, which is small enough to fit into someone’s hand, discovers all the devices on the network and allows the partner to remotely manage a customer’s network from a laptop or smartphone (using an Android or iPhone app).

Martin Cullen, director SMS&P, Microsoft Ireland
"The UC space is very buoyant at the moment," Cullen says. It’s an evolving market and Microsoft’s advantage is that it has an integrated and unified product rather than a number of discrete product offerings "lined up beside each other to try and deliver a unified opportunity".

Microsoft has been visible in IM and conferencing for some time and is "growing quite aggressively in voice side of business". That is a shift for the market and for Microsoft’s partners and they have to look at it and understand there’s a new opportunity for them that they may not have seen in their business model. "It’s becoming more of an IT opportunity, so it opens up the market for them," he observes.

But there’s a "learning curve" in terms of understanding how to talk the right language and explaining how it all interlinks and what the customer really needs out of it. "It’s a much more deep engagement with the customer," Cullen claims, because it’s a conversation about modern day telephony coupled with areas like IM and presence.

He agrees with Conlon that the SMB market is a good opportunity for partners to take a vendor’s offering and "bring the service back to the customer". If they can provide a consolidated contract where previously there may have been three or four, they can make it much easier for the customer.

Partners need to understand how to bring the customer from a traditional telephony environment to a soft switch IP telephony environment. To do that, they need to make sure they are properly skilled to deliver it to the customer. "Training and certification are absolutely imperative," he stresses.

Mary Bradshaw, managing director, Damovo Global Services
Many organisations are adopting unified communications (UC) as a strategic response to the current mobile and remote working trend, ensuring employees can stay connected at all times. Damovo Global Services enables smart work practices for employees by using UC to create a truly converged network. "We regularly hold meetings via video conferencing and communicate with our colleagues while they are in their offices, their homes or hotels around the world," Bradshaw says. 

UC technology provides employees with the capability to collaborate with colleagues in different locations as if in the same room. Video conferencing facilities enable meetings to take place with colleagues throughout Ireland and around the world, removing the need for expensive travel, saving on time and having a positive environmental impact.

As 4G and LTE gain a stronger foothold, they will have a significant effect on the uptake of UC solutions due to the low cost and high speed connectivity, which will enable organisations to collaborate easily with divisions within other regions.

UC has the ability to improve productivity and flexibility, Bradshaw adds, leading to better service delivery for customers and increased savings for the business. "For many organisations adopting UC, it’s about changing work from somewhere we go, to something we do," she suggests.

As communications becoming increasingly complex to manage, they provide "a great opportunity for channel partners like Damovo Global Services" to become the single point of contact for managing all of a customers’ communications and IT needs, across all their locations.

UC vendors such as Microsoft offer mobile clients for users to ‘conference on the go’ accessing tools such as presence, instant messaging, audio conferencing and calling features, from a single interface on their mobile device. "We work closely with Microsoft and Cisco to ensure that we are fully up-to-date on all of their latest products and features," she adds. "This enables us to match them with our customers’ requirements."

Andrew Byrne, voice and unified communications specialist, Unity Technology Solutions
From a sales perspective, UC is enabling Unity to approach opportunities differently and has forced a more holistic approach when addressing a client’s communication requirements, according to Byrne. "Conversations are no longer just about the PBX that lights up the phone on your desk; instead we are having deeper conversations around profiling users." This involves looking at how people work and where they work from, what applications they use, how they manage their calendar, e-mail and voicemail; and the type of device they use, whether it’s a mobile, a laptop or a tablet, and if they use video and audio conferencing tools.

Those variables "change how an organisation develops and deploys a UC strategy", he argues, "primarily because it involves looking at all parts of their IT infrastructure." This makes the UC opportunity more gradual, where a preferred technology and service provider is chosen and both organisations work in close partnership to deliver an end-to-end UC solution stack.

Like others, he sees mobility as a key driver for the future of UC. Like many people, Byrne has "grown attached to my smartphone and use it as my main communications device. Accessing my corporate and personal directory, viewing presence and calendar information of my colleagues, the ability to send instant messages, e-mails, make video and audio calls from my preferred device is fundamental to my productivity".

Mobile device management (MDM) is becoming critical for organisations as they attempt to control, manage and secure devices that are owned by staff members. As part of our solution portfolio, it has a number of MDM solutions including Citrix XenMobile to help organisations enable UC while maintaining strict corporate policies whether the asset is a corporate or BYO device.

He echoes others when he stresses that UC is not a new technology but the mobilisation and consumerisation of the workforce has helped it find "its rightful place in the heart of an organisation".

Conor McGrogan, managing director, Steljes Ireland
"2013 is the year that unified communications will come into its own," McGrogan declares. He points to the announcement of Microsoft’s alliance with SMART Technologies aimed at bringing Lync into the meeting room with SMART Room System (SRS), a turnkey hardware system that provides a single integration solution for audio, video and data collaboration.

As a SMART Technologies distributor, Steljes is keen to emphasise the benefits of SRS which McGrogan claims "takes meetings to another level" and fits businesses of all sizes because they can choose a small, medium or large solution. He says the SRS "offers a fantastic opportunity for resellers to go back to their existing Lync customers and offer them a complete meeting room solution" at a time when companies are looking at how they can streamline operations, work more productively and reduce costs.

"Until now, collaborative technology has been a nice to have, even a luxury, not a necessity," McGrogan argues. "Now it is fast becoming a must-have for boardrooms, meetings rooms and training rooms everywhere."

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