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Are VoIP users ready for Dell Hell?
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The announcement yesterday that tier one computer vendor Dell was entering the VoIP market sent shudders through the VoIP vendor industry, traditionally dominated by Cisco, Avaya, Nortel, Microsoft and Alcatel-Lucent. Microsoft is most affected, as it has been targeting the SMB sector, especially since Bill Gates announced last year the software giant's determination to build a third party vendor ecosystem around its communication server product.
Dell is targeting a sector it traditionally dominates as a desktop supplier and is teaming up with open-source VoIP provider Fonality and Nortel to target small and medium business. Fonality uses the Asterisk VoIP platform and has a modest, but solid, small business client base; using Dell boxes will be offering a turnkey, plug-and-play proposition. Nortel's infrastructure is more focused at mid-business levels.
But, while Dell brings obvious channel strength, the move into mission critical functionality is a significant shift from what best could be described as Dell's traditional sell-and-forget strategy. VoIP is anything but a set-and-forget technology, and if there is a consistent refrain from those who have made the IP leap it is that any deployment is a major step and requires significant planning and oversight, especially if an enterprise wants to exploit the IP functionality beyond the one-off savings from lower call costs.
Go to complaints.com and you will find a litany of complaints about what users call "Dell Hell," as customers struggle with Dell's bureaucratic, slow moving, rule-bound outsourced calls centers. Pity the first enterprise with any problems beyond the norm because, in my experience, that is where Dell is at its worst. The Dell model is all about systematizing processes to bring costs down and tragically you get what you pay for.
So while the expected $750-a-seat cost will look attractive to the CFO, compared with say $2,000 for a Cisco deployment, it will be the IT department (or the office tech) who will be left with the heartburn and angst of having to deal with the Texan consumer behemoth. It is almost impossible to talk to a real Dell person--as opposed to an offshore call center--when things do go awry. Dell's service culture will struggle to deal with the vagaries of a simple VoIP deployment, but is utterly not ready to support any enterprise that wants to push the edge of its IP boundary to move to real time networking. And while Fonality is handling the VoIP part of the business the whole system will be driven and marketed by Dell.
For More:
- Ironically Dell tags its VoIP play at its blog under "customer experience"
- Dell Thinks Small Biz is Big Biz for VoIP Article
- Cisco look out below Article
- Fonality chief takes fire at the big vendors at his own blog
Related articles:
Asterisk was listed among our Top 10 leaders for 2007
Dell jumps on the Microsoft UC bandwagon Report
Comments
Posted by Anonymous | January 24, 2008 - 12:47pm
I guess Fonality was brought in when Mitel killed the Inter-Tel 7000 that Dell was selling for a nanosecond. I suppose Dell wanted something VoIP that ran on it's servers, and Nortel is all about proprietary hardware.
Also, from what I know, Dell will NOT be providing support but rather escalating back to the manufacturer. They MAY take the initial call (in India of course) but forwarding it back.
Posted by DIGITALSON | January 27, 2008 - 4:11am
This could be great or horrible for the VoIP industry. VoIP certainly takes the right components to fire off without a hitch, and its very questionable that Dell will provide that oversight, as well as fonality. A recent bug was found in fonalities business class product that could allow for remote root access- they use it to update their installations remotely-- it comes with NO PRIVACY too. They way fonality is setup is quite a shame as well. If their management servers go down, you are essentially dead in the water for any changes that need to be made. They really made a mistake taking away local management. No reason it should be on a foreign server for a few reasons that should be common sense to most out there. As a fellow VoIP selling company, I have seen many horror stories with fonality and others that do not have the slightest idea what they are doing. I really dont see Dell relieving any pain here given their current business practices. Lets just hope VoIP folks will start learning how to do it the "right" way so end users start having better experiences full circle...
Posted by Anonymous | March 8, 2008 - 7:49pm
Dell Hell is right on, what a joke. Guaranteed to be micro-managed straight to the bottomless pit of cost cutting bundled with bs hype. Those that buy this service will flat out be ripped off.
The one good thing that could come from this is even more visibility into Dell's horrid customer experience. Perhaps convincing IT dept's to look to different OEM's of IT infrastructures and server/desktop hardware.
Posted by Tony Ruiz | April 16, 2008 - 11:35pm
I am in Dell Hell too after buying a nice Inspiron 1521 for my daughter in August '07. As of today, it won't turn on after freezing up and basically will not work. I boutht eight (8) service & warranty coverages but Dell claims my issue is software and I did not buy coverage for that. Bull. Two hardware coverages are specified as such, the remaining 6 do not specify, therefore software is covered by exclusion but Indians don't understand that kind of reasoning. Everything on my P.O. and Packing Slip are all clear and in black & white but Dell Indians keep wanting to add words to the coverage as written.
This company is a mess, their "customer careless" doesn't care or help and there is no way to get this computer to work again without help I paid for and can't get from them. They actually insisted on selling me a $300 for "software coverage". Now that's pathetic and I cannot understand how we can be so stupid as to make this company so successful.
Don't do it. Buy a Mac where they know how to service what they sell. The rest of the PCs are all junk without support. It's called "OEM" software, and just gives Mike Dell another income stream on the backs of otherwise reliable software.
I hate Dell and will never, never do it again.
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