NXTComm08: Bare Knuckles Over UC SMB

The last panel at Fierce's Unified Communication Conference at NXTComm08 in Las Vegas turned into one of the more heated, as a carrier, a software company, a hosted provider, and a hardware manufacturer alternately squared off and agreed with each other when it came to discussing UC in the SMB space.

Allworx President George Daddis and Cypress Communications President/CEO Stephen Schilling got into a rolling discussion about the economics of an appliance solution verses a hosted one. Each claimed to have a ROI white paper demonstrating that their respective solutions would have a better return on investment and each seemed to have a different view of what their respective customers wanted. Daddis indicated a good channel partner/VAR relationship was the key to a headache free solution while Schilling had a number of business and financial customers who were more than happy to have a hosted solution.

Digium's Bill Miller was happy to take both sides on the appliances v. hosted debate, pointing out Asterisk software and Digium products were used in both hosted solutions and appliances, including the SMB SwitchVox solution, but also threw in a dig that "he hadn't come across Allworx too much" in the marketplace.

Dropping Cisco into the discussion brought up more nuanced commentary from the panel. Cbeyond VP of Marketing Rob Consolazio and Schilling were both careful to point out they both had Cisco-powered networks while either Miller or Daddis said Cisco had not demonstrated much traction into the SMB space in spite of and/or due to its acquisition of Linksys.

None of the panelists felt immediately threatened by Microsoft's entry into the SMB and several ridiculed using Costco.com as a sales channel for Microsoft's Response Point IP PBX solution.  Miller noted Microsoft had a history of requiring multiple iterations of software to get to a winning solution.

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