A lifeline for drowning clients

Many businesses are drowning in a sea of phone calls, faxes, emails and other newfangled lines of communication, but Unified Communications offers the channel an opportunity to throw customers a lifeline.

At its simplest, UC aims to integrate all of a business’ various communications channels into one seamless experience. It’s the convenience of checking your email from your phone, your phone messages from your computer or your faxes over the web. Building on Voice over IP and the concept of presence – both made popular by free instant messaging applications – a Unified Messaging system can assess your availability before deciding how to handle incoming messaging.

The goal of UC is to improve productivity by ensuring people spend less time juggling devices and playing phone tag, leaving more time to get things done. One of the key benefits of UC in the office environment is the ease with which users can seamlessly switch between modes of communication.

This melding of communications also ties in with another great Work 2.0 buzz word; collaboration. It offers the flexibility of easily creating conference calls on the fly – switching mid-conversation between voice, video, instant messaging and virtual whiteboards depending on what best suits the situation. Such functionality can then be integrated into existing applications and business processes.

UC is a tailored suite of services tied together to fit in with the way a business works. As such, until recently UC has been in the domain of traditional VoIP providers such as networking behemoth Cisco and voice giant Avaya. Practically every vendor that once lived off the fat of the networking or PABX markets now has a VoIP and UC offering.

IT players have recently joined the fray, with Microsoft launching Office Communications Server 2007 late last year to tie in with its collaboration tools such as Office, Exchange and Sharepoint. Big Blue has also thrown its hat in the ring, with IBM rolling out Lotus Sametime to win a share of the UC market.

Both the voice and data sides of the VoIP market traditionally work with the channel to reach customers but, as dial tone becomes a commodity, the big telecommunications carriers have also realised the importance of UC in maintaining their margins.

Telcos already have a direct relationship with businesses and these carriers may be looking to squeeze out the channel as they chase a slice of the UC pie, warns Gartner’s research vice president for enterprise communications applications Geoff Johnson.

“Carriers are suffering 10 percent per year voice revenue declines and they need new lines of business – mobility, broadband and value-added services on top of that,” Johnson said. “All the carriers – whether regional, national or global – are pretty keen about having a UC solution, otherwise they’re just going to end up with commoditised services – big, fat, dumb pipes and no margins.”

It’s not just local telcos after a slice of the UC pie. The business arm of US telco giant Verizon is looking to expand its offerings in Australia in 2008, providing a UC solution to build on the Australian VoIP service it launched last year. Verizon Business is investing heavily in Australia to build an inter-capital fibre optic – to support the new services focusing on collaboration, mobility and security. The channel won’t get a taste of the action because Verizon Business deals directly with its end customers.

At the same time, the channel also faces a threat from small, nimble players rising up from the consumer space to target SMEs with pre-packaged UC solutions. Consumer VoIP providers such as MyNetFone are branching into business-focused mobility and UC, said MyNetFone technical director Rene Sugo.

“We’ve had a lot of interest from our business customers in the ability to divert internal calls to a mobile device,” Sugo said. “One warehouse has four VoIP lines with each forwarding from a manager’s desktop phone to WiFi phone so when they’re on the floor they can pick up calls without diverting to mobile. They were spending a fortune on mobile calls until our sales guys suggested this to them.”

Sugo said the real benefits for businesses will come from workgroup-based features – touting functionality previously only available to large corporates from voice specialists.
“We’re looking at hunt group and ring group capabilities, so you can do things such as create a workgroup for your sales force and have the system check if other people in the group are available to take the call before going to voicemail. Like our other features, it can all be configured through our web portal. We’re getting to the point where you can just put a VoIP phone on your desktop and manage everything through your MyNetFone account online. You can create groups, set up diversion and even allocate new numbers on the fly from the website.

It’s unifying communications whilst removing the complexity.”

Such services don’t leave much room at the table for the channel. The advances of Voice over IP and UC empower organisations to take control of their telecommunications systems. This means many organisations are looking for a supplier that doesn’t look to put the squeeze on customers in the form of expensive call-out fees to handle trivial tasks.

David Blaymires is a director of JobBag, a Sydney software house developing accounting and resource management software targeted at SMEs. When Blaymires arrived at work one Monday morning to discover his ageing phone system had given up the ghost, he took it as a sign it was time to move into the age of Voice over IP.

Blaymires advises businesses in the market for a VoIP solution to look to system integrators who give their customers control over their own phone system.

“Long gone are the days of paying your voice system integrator to make an expensive house call every time you want to add a telephone or make some small change to the system,” Blaymires said.

“I tell people to look for system integrators supporting open standards, so you’ve got the freedom to consider a best of breed solution. Next, ask how open is the API [Application Programming Interface]. How easily can other systems talk and communicate with their phone systems? Beware of system integrators who want to lock you into something you’re not sure about.”

So far, the whole concept of UC would seem to cut the channel’s lunch. Much of the channel makes its money through integration – basically helping businesses stick components together so they play nicely with each other. In days gone by, rollouts such as Computer Telephony Integration were a messy process that chewed through plenty of billable hours for system integrators, but today vendors are trying to offer such integrated functionality out of the box. At the same time, customers are demanding more control over their own communications systems.
The good news for the channel is that UC is not the end game, but merely a stop along the journey towards “communications-enabled business process”, said Gartner’s Johnson.

“The only reason business people would invest in IT or communication is because it’s going to do something for their business process. UC is going to be a handy set of tools on the way to communications-enabled business processes. If that is a business’ reason for investment then we think the IT platform provider is probably going to dominate,” he said.

“Generally IT platform providers get a look in because they’re closest to the business process, so the next question is who are their partners? What comes out of that for the channel is that system integrators are going to be more valued in the future than network integrators. System integrators are more likely to get the prime contracts and network integrators the sub-contracts. That’s a huge statement by itself.

“Now the network integrators are thinking “hang on, I’m going to get all this shitty work that’s subbing for somebody else”. If they want to do something about that, maybe they need to acquire system integration skills or consider mergers, acquisitions and organic growth – whatever it takes to reposition themselves.”

Cisco’s channel operations director Jeff Sheard agrees that UC means channel players need to think beyond gluing together communications tools and find ways to build services on top of this new communications platform.

“Increasingly customers are not prepared to pay for that sort of basic integration, what they are prepared to pay a for, or pay a premium for, is applications that enable some productivity or deliver some innovation,” Sheard said.

“This presents a tremendous opportunity for channel players to move up the value chain, because you’re talking about getting into an applications environment and perhaps developing solutions for particular industry verticals. It’s an opportunity to develop a unique capability and expertise around the technology and a particular vertical, or perhaps a geography such as far north Queensland or Western Australia’s mining industry. Partners have an opportunity to own a particular niche and therefore drive a higher
margin yield.”

While evolving technology may force channel players to reposition themselves, Sheard said the channel’s intimate relationship with customers means there will always be money to be made in consulting and management.

“The integrator is responsible for all scoping and alignment to business priorities, and ultimately responsible for the success of the project, based on knowing how the customer defines success,” Sheard said.

“This requires sound technical skills and a deep understanding of how the components fit together, but also project management skills to keep the project on track. It also requires consultative skills to ensure all parties are engaged during the planning, implementation and sign-off phases.”

An effective UC implementation also needs to focus on the business value, said Siemens Enterprise Networks’ chief technology officer Mark Anderson.

“Technology gurus are important but need to be steered by a definition team able to understand the goals of the project,” Anderson said.

“A good system integrator must be able to draw on a broad range of expertise, but the nature of the beast is anticipating and conquering gotchas that will come into projects – which requires experience and knowledge of the environment. Typically system integration projects are unique, so a cookie cutter mentality based on longstanding vendor relationships is not necessarily
a good starting point.”

“I think that those who come from a voice background still tend to think the world revolves around what the voice requirements are. Those who come from a data background are just the opposite. I think those who are going to be successful are the ones who can then make the leap to the fact that there is no distinction.”

OKI is better known in Australia for its printers, but it has re-entered the Australian voice market with OKI IP Stage after an agreement with Ericsson expired. OKI IP Stage product manager and national channel manager, Anya Grichina, agrees the rise of UC presents new opportunities for channel players prepared to embrace them.

“They would need to take on extra skills and offer applications not supplied by the big players such as the telcos – and you will always find those opportunities if you look for them,” Grichina said.
“There’s so much customisation that goes into UC that the chances are not one supplier will offer absolutely everything, so there’s always an opportunity to add value, whether it be integration, extra software or consulting. For the channel, the relationship with your customer is more important than ever because the end-user always goes to the integrator for advice and consulting.”

On the IT side of the fence, Microsoft’s UC platform also offers a foundation on which channel players can build custom solutions targeting particular markets. Microsoft applications such as Outlook already let users see the presence status of colleagues, but the software giant is working to allow users to embed that information in other applications, said Microsoft Australia information worker group director Tony Wilkinson.

“A lot of our partners in the past have been focused around the provision of desktop infrastructure, providing information for people using those systems. Add UC and you find IT and communications come together, providing different revenue streams for partners,” Wilkinson said.

“As the industry moves from traditional VoIP to enhanced UC, the channel needs to be prepared. VoIP used to be about convergence at the network layer only, but UC takes that to the next level at the application layer. To stay ahead of the pack, it’s important for partners and integrators to learn about these new concepts and keep their skills and knowledge current. Clients want information about the new platform and how it can work with their infrastructure, so the channel needs to ensure they are in a position to be able to advise clients and integrate solutions.”

Microsoft’s offerings allow UC capabilities to be embeded within everyday applications and business processes, Wilkinson said.

“Within an application you could enable the ability to make voice calls, start instant messaging, send emails or utilise any of those sorts of UC capabilities,” he said.

“It is not only our pre-package stuff, it is the stuff that people develop themselves. For example, you could embed presence information into an existing call centre application and then enable all sorts of new capabilities. Now within that application you could use any of those sorts of UC capabilities to contact the necessary people to resolve a caller’s issue on the spot. That adds value, which is obviously what the channel needs to focus on in order to stay in the game.’’

While integrators should be looking to re-tool in order to play further up the food chain, Nortel’s Mitch Radomir – enterprise solutions and marketing manager for UC, Asia – believes there’s still plenty of work for the channel in gluing together communications building blocks.

“You will always need to do the integration job,” Radomir said. “The channel partners will still have to integrate technologies when the customer is using CTI type technologies, for example.”

“Now the channel has communications standards to build on, such as SIP, rather than introducing yet more proprietary technology which can be a show-stopper. The good thing is that if we make the integration or the inter-working far more standards-based, it also means our partners will be able to do more of the solutions at a cheaper price and as a result stimulate the market.”

Deploying these new technologies within specified budgets and time frames will also require the services of skilled integrators, Radomir said.

“A customer might have a two-year budget so they can’t buy everything in one hit. How can they start to deploy the solution throughout their organisation so they eventually get to that UC vision, but do it within their own time frame and budget? That takes a fair bit of skill,” he said.

“In order to provide such insight, I think the channel has to understand a little more of a day in the life of the user. I think it’s very important to know how people are using this technology and how they are likely to use it in the future. This is little bit more involved than just talking features or Return On Investment, it involves understanding how people work now, and how they will in the future, so you can build the infrastructure to enable it.”

To obtain this understanding, system integrators must eat their our own dog food to truly grasp a customer’s UC requirements, said Craig Neil, managing director of VoIP system integrator NSC Group.

“Based on NSC’s experience, it is vital to deploy it in-house first so you can speak from a position of authority when discussing UC with customers,” Neil said.

“System integrators are the best placed to take advantage of UC. It is not a simple sell and one of the keys to success is the integrator’s close relationship with the customer and the deep understanding of all aspects of the customer’s business. To achieve a strong Return On Investment, UC must go beyond desktop integration and be embedded into an organisation’s business processes. This is where an integrator’s application development and implementation skills come to the fore.

“Take things slowly. Don’t skill-up too early. You may end up with highly trained implementation resources sitting around waiting for quite some time before putting their new skills into practice.”

Before any organisation embarks on a quest to unify its communications, it needs to make sure all its networking infrastructure ducks are in a row, said Pushkar Taneja, managing director of networking system integrator GlobalConnect.

“An organisation might have invested in technology that it’s quite happy with, however when it starts looking at UC you need to realise you’re going to have multiple communications channels working together under the UC umbrella,” he warned.

“The areas our customers have had to pay attention to is their data networking environment. When you look at the data side, people are often only using email, web browsing and perhaps instant messaging. Any network delays are not really apparent to users, but once you start integrating voice into the environment – with voice travelling as data packets – you can’t afford to have latency affecting performance. The first step is for someone to come and do a survey of their business and compile a report of what it might need to do to prepare for UC.”