On the second day of UC the industry gave to me what SMB loves,
and a clear definition of UC.
My second day of UC wish is a particular interest of mine. What SMB loves is to be the center of attention. Don’t we all enjoy that? But its my opinion that when it comes to unified communications the industry hasn’t done enough to educate small and mid-sized businesses on the impact that UC applications can have on their networks, nor have we done a good job of educating SMBs as to the possible pitfalls of blindly adding on applications without proper network assessment and planning. Then there is the issue of security. SMBs may not want vendors to muck with their data, but its not uncommon for someone selling into those businesses to have to educate them on the value of backing that data up, let alone what the impact would be on the security of that data if new applications are added that might create security holes. Therefore, wish number two is a stronger focus on the SMB market.
Happily, in the last several months it seems this issue is getting a lot more press with a smattering of vendors announcing focus in that area. For example, recently a SearchVoIP article entitled, Unified Communications Considerations for 2008, had Siemens predicting “More managed services providers will announce powerful, new, sophisticated UC offerings for small to mid-sized businesses and enterprises”. Managed services are another area that shows promise for helping SMBs expand into areas like UC. In fact, companies such as Communicado, Inc. take that a step further by providing management of UC as a service. But, my wish is for companies of all types, whether they are the UC heavy hitters, or managed service providers (or a combo), to do a better, perhaps striving to be stellar, job of preparing the SMB market to implement UC.
In my talks with vendors it’s clear that the industry as a whole is very aware of the SMB market, and is beginning to make a big effort in providing SMB with what they love, even if we have a long way to go to satisfy wish number two. Most of the bigger, traditional telephony vendors, such as Avaya, Nortel and Siemens, have divisions focusing on the SMB market. Part of their challenge is creating products designed for that market, rather than downsizing existing enterprise products to suit it. With decades of focusing on the enterprise, I’m sure this has been a challenge, but from listening to them and others, they are making tremendous progress, although I’m not going to go into specifics as I’d be here all day.
I will mention what a few vendors are doing in UC for the SMB market, however, just as examples of progress. First, NEC has put forth a significant effort in educating their dealer channel on how to prepare SMBs for UC, and in August launched UC for Business (UCB) to address the SMB market. It combines UC functionality, including rich presence, mobility and desktop telephony applications (that can integrate with Outlook) with contact center functionality, giving SMBs an all-in-one product. They also provide managed services for both IT and security for those businesses that need it, which hits the spot for a segment that is sometime low in IT support.
Then there is ShoreTel, who has designed their products to be very SMB-friendly, and their project management to match. In fact, in their 2007 report entitled “Building the Successful Virtual Workplace: VoIP Review: Products, Services, Architecture”, Nemertes Research ranked ShoreTel highest on ease of implementation, commenting that some customers have said that sales reps have come to their offices and gotten the system up and running in two hours. (You can download the report on ShoreTel’s site – although they did not sponsor it) Also, being married to a ShoreTel reseller that has installed a dozen or so ShoreTel PBXs, I can honestly say that the running commentary on ease of installation and support is similarly praiseworthy.
Interactive Intelligence is another great example of an SMB focus. The biggest quiver in their arsenal is the fact that they are software-only, with all UC functionality seamlessly integrated together. Their Vonexus Enterprise Interaction Center (EIC) was architected to take out the complexity for the SMB market, while still providing a comprehensive feature set for that market.
There is way more to talk about in the coming year, and I know we are on a roll here in providing solutions to an underserved market, I just wish that a year from now that market will be happily crowing about UC.