VoIP: The state of play

 For channel partners eyeing off the VoIP market, the number one thing they should be doing is assessing the balance in their skills bank.

“Look at the skills you have today and do some gap analogies. There are a lot of companies toying with the idea of putting together IP telephony offerings, but they need to ask if they have the expertise internally, and if not, how to build them,” IDC’s Fevre says. IT providers pitching for work in the VoIP space will have noticed changes in the competitive environment over the past year.

Even as recently as 10 months ago, when Zultys’ business development director Tony Warhurst went to bid for project opportunities, he would be the only VoIP guy there amongst traditional PABX vendors. “Now when we go in to bid, it’s normally three VoIP vendors bidding for the business,” he says.

Zultys manufactures telephony and data integration products and in 2001 built a new VoIP platform and IP handsets from the ground up, Warhurst says.

“One hundred percent of our business is IP telephony...and we focus on SMEs,” he says. SMEs will end up being a lucrative VoIP market, they make up a big proportion of the Australian market. “Some of these companies might only have 75 employees, but they’ll have small offices in all the capital cities,” he says.

Telcos may not have made huge inroads in the VoIP market so far, but expect that to change. Logitech Australia’s general manager, Marco Manera, says while telcos still currently make a huge amount of revenue on traditional telephony services, it will not be long before they work out how to maximise their revenue opportunity with VoIP, without losing revenue [on traditional services] in the meantime.

They will be looking at additional services, he says, and one way to do that will be to partner with VoIP providers who already have some traction in the market. Hopefully VoIP channel partners will be smart enough not to get gobbled up and spat out.

There are VoIP opportunities at every tier from big business right down to the consumer. Express Data’s managing director Ross Cochrane says there is money to be made with customers of any size -- so long as you can create trust and a ‘value relationship’ with the client.

CMS's Lane: Know that the bandwidth can cope with VoIP

“If you help them through decision making around a business outcome they want to achieve, then there’s very good opportunity for margin. There’s consulting and scoping, hardware, software and a whole ancillary infrastructure around voice -- such as security, reliability and power. It’s an opportunity to support them through a big change in their business,” he says.

There are varying reasons why companies head for VoIP, apart from the business benefits. “Some go into VoIP because their competitors are, and they have to keep up with the Joneses,” says Jenny Lane, managing director at distributor CMS Better Online Solutions.

“Others want to be perceived as being at the cutting edge of technology, or simply because they hate Telstra and want to give them a little slap in the face. Still others are given directives from their overseas head offices.”

Whatever the motivation, channel partners who do thorough groundwork prior to implementation pull off successful projects.

“You need to do your homework. Know that the bandwidth can cope with VoIP, that the infrastructure can cope with VoIP, and minimise nasty surprises.”

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