You need to be multi-vendor with UC
Unified communications demands a multi-tenant approach, argues Abdel Kander
Service providers and SIs handling unified communications (UC) should take a multi-vendor approach to services and support.
While the market has undoubtedly reached new levels of maturity, there is still a common misconception that it is centred on the ability to "call" people.
Though IP telephony is at the heart of UC, true UC is about the integration of real-time communications services that enhance productivity.
Those organisations harnessing the power of UC today are enriching communications with sophisticated features such as assistant-manager filtering, presence, extension mobility, busy lamp fields, video and webconferencing, messaging and integration with other information systems.
No single vendor can claim market supremacy. With so many vendors operating in the market, it is impossible for one vendor to have the best UC offerings across the board.
One may have the best phone sound quality, but not the most popular instant messaging tool. And more ICT managers are choosing a best-of-breed approach to their UC platforms.
Yet when it comes to service providers and SIs, only a small pool of specialised outfits are really good at deploying the full spectrum of technologies available from different vendors.
These service providers tend to develop a special relationship with vendors based on mutual appreciation and it is not uncommon for them to specialise in a single vendor's offering.
I would argue that this is short-sighted and cannot possibly meet the needs of enterprise customers, which almost certainly have a combination of vendor technologies within their UC environments.
Whether for historical reasons (mergers and acquisitions) or by choice (to limit dependency on a single vendor), large companies will demand that their service provider is able to manage this. Take, for example, a large financial institution in Europe that I know of. It has 30,000 phone lines powered by Alcatel-Lucent and another 20,000 by Cisco.
It has no plans to homogenise across all 50,000 lines in the next five years, so any SIs or service providers with which they partner will need to have the capability to manage that environment.
Added to this, while the technology landscape may not be homogeneous, large and small customers will still issue all-encompassing service management tenders. These tenders could be global and may include on- and off-premise infrastructure management, creating complex and varied requirements.
For example, in France Alcatel-Lucent and Cisco have the lion's share of the industry but if you move across the channel, you see a lot of Mitel dependencies. With staff moving from one region to another, customers will expect their partners to be able to effectively manage these cross-border environments.
ICT decision makers are also under pressure from a user community that is demanding more choice and the introduction of consumer-grade technology in the enterprise. The drive towards bring-your-own-device is forcing a change in the IT department which means its decisions are no longer just accepted.
People have higher expectations of technology now as they are using tools in their own daily lives and expect them to be available when at work. This is leading to a new generation of office workers bringing in their own tablets and laptops, which need to be interoperable with the enterprise environment, adding another layer of complexity to the work environment and bringing new vendors into the mix.
With all these factors in mind, service providers have to have management processes and tools that will enable them to control these complex multi-vendor environments.
Service providers delivering managed services – or even a UC solution in the cloud – must avoid being seen as a one-trick pony. The future for the channel is in diversifying its solutions to offer vendor-neutral support and services across a range of UC technologies.
Only then will they be able to demonstrate true flexibility and responsiveness to customer demands.
Abdel Kander is chief executive officer of Kurmi Software
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