Small And Medium Enterprises

8x8's half-off sale

Doug Mohney — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:21:55 -0500

8x8 has announced a year-end 50 percent off special for new subscribers to its Virtual Office Phone service.

Businesses who sign up for the Virtual Office hosted PBX service can now pay $24.99 per month per extension if they subscribe by December 31, 2008, instead of the usual $49.99 per extension. They also can choose to pay $250 per extension in a one-time annual fee for the first year. New customers have to purchase 8x8's new IP phones and agree to keep the service for at least one year to be eligible.

Interestingly, we don't expect to see "relief" business packages from other VoIP and IP communications providers by the end of the year. All the others are sticking to the "we save you money over traditional phone service" line and seem to be reluctant to engage in a significant price cut/discount package for fear of trigging a price war - something no one wants at this point in time.

Life may be more interesting over on the consumer side in larger markets, however, with cable companies attempting to add more ARPU and/or suck up more market share from phone companies. Since October, Comcast has been offering free cable service with the purchase of Internet or phone service.

For more:
- Read the press release from 8x8.

CompTIA: SMBs see growth opps; IT spend more cautious

Doug Mohney — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:12:28 -0500

A new survey released today by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) says SMBs are hopeful that business will grow over the next 12 months, but they're a little more cautious when it comes to spending dollars on IT and communications resources.

The survey, covering 777 SMBs in the U.S., Canada, and the UK, found that 85 percent plan to hire new employees over the next 12 months, 54 percent anticipate revenue growth of 10 percent of more and 40 percent plan to add new business locations.

However, only 51 percent of the SMBs surveyed said they plan to increase their tech spending over the next 12 months with 49 percent expecting their tech spending to remain flat or decline. This is different from the 62 percent who said they were planning to boost spending in last year's study and 38 percent saying flat or decline.

CompTIA says the 2008 survey is actually a good indicator for the tech industry; in earlier times, IT would have been among the first items trimmed back. Today, SMBs are "savvier" because they need technology for more of their core business operations.

New technology investments (computers, phones) also support the new head counts expected to be added; on average, SMBs say they will add 8 new employees over the next 12 months while 40 percent plan to add between one and five new locations.

For more:
- CompTIA talks of bullish SMBs. Press release

Allworx's new President: Re-engaging channels & PAETEC bundles

Doug Mohney — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 10:39:58 -0500

With three days on the job, Allworx President Jeff Howe sat down with FierceVoIP to talk about the challenges the company faces and the advantages integration with parent CLEC PAETEC brings to the table.

"We don't have a product problem," said Howe. "Our engineering and support are good... We have a revenue issue. How do we take it to the next level?"

Howe, formerly PAETEC's Vice President/General Manager for the Agent Channel, is focusing on re-engaging Allworx's resellers and to offer them new opportunities to generate both more revenue and monthly recurring revenue.

Part of the solution is to create new bundles and services leveraging PAETEC offerings with the baseline IP PBX telephony hardware and phones so resellers can provide more than a one-time revenue opportunity. PAETEC, a national telecommunications provider focused on "business-class" customers, generated over $1.6 billion in revenue last year. With a footprint covering more than 80 percent of the nation's 100 metropolitan areas, PAETEC certainly has the reach to support channel partners of all sizes.

Allworx resellers will soon have the option of creatively financing gear through PAETEC and bundling in monthly phone services. Resellers would get a cut of the monthly revenues from the PAETEC services that they sell.

In one model, PAETEC could provide a monthly financing option for Allworx equipment along with phone services on a single bill. A leasing-type arrangement would be a much more attractive option to businesses wanting to avoid a large, out-of-pocket capital expenditure. PAETEC could also provide other managed services through an Internet-based bundle, including off-site data backup and recovery, web server hosting, and managed firewall and router support.

Nortel adds SMB, medium business UC hardware

Doug Mohney — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:55:57 -0400

Unfazed by predictions of doom by market analysts, Nortel continues to roll out new products, this time aiming at the SMB and medium-sized business sectors with data and UC server offerings.

"We've been pretty vocal," said Nortel VP Wes Durow. "We've placed a bet, we're going to grow and invest in the enterprise space. We've been focused on the UC portfolio with Microsoft and IBM on the larger side... the announcements extend our UC story to SMBs."

The first product announced today, Nortel's Business Communications Manager (BCM) 450, is aimed at medium-sized businesses and will support up to 300 employees. It is designed, in part, to be a replacement box for "tens of thousands" of deployed Norstar systems. It will provide a growth path to IP while delivering UC and leveraging the existing investment in existing infrastructure, including cable and handsets. Durow said channel partners have been "very vocal" about the need to release the product and said it had been brought to market two months in advance due to channel demand.

UC features being delivered on the BCM 450 include unified messaging, meet-me conferencing for up to 120 participants, CTI integration for use with third-party applications and intelligent call center functionality. A message forwarding capability to direct voicemails and faxes to the most convenient desktop or mobile device is expected to be available in "one or two months."

On the data side of the house, the BSG 8 and 12 series are (almost) all-in-one devices combining the functions of wired and wireless switching, router, firewall, VPN and intrusion detection, SIP gateway with integrated ATA, and Quality of Service (QoS) prioritizing into one box. The QoS functional is described as application aware, so voice and video should get priority on the network over vanilla data traffic.

The BSG 8 can support up to 50 concurrent SIP sessions and the manufacturers suggested retail price is $1,316. The BSG 12 supports up to 100 concurrent SIP sessions and runs from $3,377 to $4,198, depending on configuration.

Related articles
NXTcomm08: Microsoft Announces Hosted UC solution; Nortel delivers first
Nortel sounds warning bell, may sell unit - FierceTelecom

Fonality dials up HUD to 3.0

Doug Mohney — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:23:39 -0400

Fonality has released HUD 3.0, the latest upgrade to its unified communications platform.

HUD ties presence management and detection into a single interface. New features added include SMS support and Google Talk integration; Google Talk provides a federation capability to communicate with users outside of the standard business HUD group, so desktop and mobile (BlackBerry & iPhone) users are available for presence and messaging.

A mobile presence feature adds visual presence to other users when a cell phone is logged into the system; presence is extended into queues and conferencing. There's also a visual conference feature that enables drag and drop of calls into conferences, plus ways to create permissions for recording, muting, and removing calls - adding a photo to ID a caller is an option.

Like everyone else these days, HUD adds a visual voice mail feature to allow users to search, sort, play, and save messages from a desktop.

To top it all off, HUD enables "visual queue" management for call center queues, providing a virtual wall board to show agents and managers all calls in queue. Managers can drag and drop calls onto agents and set alerts to notify when calls have been holding too long or when an abandoned call has occurred.

For more:
- Fonality announces HUD 3.0. Release.

OnRelay embraces open source - with a surprise

Doug Mohney — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 11:21:04 -0400

OnRelay's IP PBX/mobile UC solution has moved to an open source platform and will be offered as a lower-cost hosted product. The company's use of sipX is an interesting surprise and likely to give warm fuzzies to Nortel, which bought sipX parent Pingtel less than a month ago.

In an interview earlier this week, CEO Ivar Plahte said the new platform allows OnRelay to offer its product at an affordable price points to the small to medium-sized enterprise. "The weakness of the IP Centrex model is that it's too cookie cutter," he said. "We can be the mobile PBX rather than the IP PBX."

OnRelay's MBX product is essentially a PBX for mobile phones, using a patented solution to autonomously route all incoming and outgoing mobile calls through an office phone system (hosted or managed). Plahte said that MBX can also incorporate desktop phones into its service, but his personal prejudice is to an all-mobile environment.

The new open source-based hosted MBX product is at a price point where a smaller service provider or an Internet Telephony Service Provider (ITSP) could simply throw a 1U appliance in a rack and start offering a PBX solution to a group of mobile users. "We think there's an opportunity for more lightweight, next gen telcos," Plahte said. "The model is more of an internet type. With a low entry cost, [a service provider] can put up a Linux server for the first customer, then continue to build customers."

OnRelay started reviewing options for a lower cost solution over a year ago, including Microsoft OCS and sipX. "We looked at [sipX] very carefully," Plathe stated. "It's a good piece of software, we had few problems integrating to it."

Plathe also discussed the implications of Nortel owning the Pingtel development team and controlling the future of sipX. "It's a double-edged sword in a way," said Plathe. "There's a benefit, a serious commitment, serious R&D on open source. Nortel continues to support open source platforms...The risk is Nortel starts acting like Nortel again, an anti-partner, very closed, very telco, Bellhead organization." Still, Plathe believes that Nortel will continue to embrace open source and move the sipX platform forward.

For more:
- OnRelay embraces open source. Release

Related articles
Nortel Buys Pingtel
OnRelay Picks the Green Fight

Tight Budgets Drive SMEs to Hosted VoIP

Doug Mohney — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:49:49 -0400

Hosted IP PBX services are breaking out across North America and it's a good thing because tighter budgets are motivating SMEs to hosted solutions, says Frost & Sullivan.

F&S expects nearly 4 million hosted users in 2013, a large increase from the 860,000 in 2007. Lack of capital budgets for many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is cited as the key driver for the North American hosted IP telephony and VoIP access service markets. Companies can get an advanced solution without spending a lot of money up front and avoid ongoing operating expenses.

The downside to this is a lack of in-house IT staff that can delay the adoption of new IT and/or telecom solutions, forcing smaller business owners to have to sort through and figure out options for themselves. Other problems to adoption include negative perceptions around traditional Centrix services and vendor reliability concerns. SMEs are still judging hosted providers by service quality, reliability, provisioning, pricing, and feature diversity.

For more:
- Read Frost and Sullivan's announcement of its SME Hosted VoIP report

Related articles:
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Budgets drive N. American SMEs to hosted IP telephony

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 06:59:54 -0400

Research and Markets "North American Hosted IP Telephony and VoIP Access Service Markets 2008" (written by Frost & Sullivan) finds that North American IP and VoIP access service markets are expected to continue grow over the next several years. The biggest growth has been in hosted IP PBX services with the key value proposition (as you'd expect) in the ability to offer a fully outsource solution to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that lack the money to implement and manage telephony in house. There is also bonus credit given for greater scalability and business continuity associated with hosted solutions.

Despite the improvements in IP telephony, businesses remain skeptical of the technology's ability to match the level of reliability in the PSTN. Another downside listed is E911 compliance issues.

Still, the report sees more hosted IP telephony services moving beyond SMEs into large (over 500 employees) businesses, especially those with remote offices and telecommuting workforces. Incentives include cost savings and the ability to migrate sites on an individual basis through hosted, rather than to upgrade voice infrastructure (and all those capital costs) all at once.

For more:
- Research and Markets North American Hosted IP and VoIP access report brief.

Related articles:
Hosted VoIP one click away
Enterprise VoIP in 2008 an uphill battle
XO Hosting Mobile UC

Limited Budgets Drive North American SMEs to Hosted IP Telephony

Doug Mohney — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 22:50:09 -0400

Research and Markets “North American Hosted IP Telephony and VoIP Access Service Markets 2008" (written by Frost & Sullivan) finds that North American IP and VoIP access service markets are expected to continue grow over the next several years. The biggest growth has been in hosted IP PBX services with the key value proposition (as you’d expect) in the ability to offer a fully outsource solution to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that lack the money to implement and manage telephony in house. There is also bonus credit given for greater scalability and business continuity associated with hosted solutions.

Despite the improvements in IP telephony, businesses remain skeptical of the technology’s ability to match the level of reliability in the PSTN. Another downside listed is E911 compliance issues.

For more:
- Research and Markets North American Hosted IP and VoIP access report brief.

Related articles:
Hosted VoIP one click away
Enterprise VoIP in 2008 an uphill battle
XO Hosting Mobile UC