Legacy Technology

VoIP, telephony fuel VAR survival, growth

Doug Mohney — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 19:33:19 -0500

Phone-centric VARs in the mid-Atlantic region are doing pretty well these days, making money from VoIP and network technologies to keep steady and even grow during tighter times.

For example, Delta Telephone & Cabling is expecting its revenues to increase, as it continues to service existing government and education clients while reaching out to new prospects in the public sector. Delta sees a lot of late '90s phone systems that are ready for replacement.

Other Maryland-based VARs are also thriving with a mixture of government and commercial clients receiving Internet, phone service, and PBX offerings. Call center management, videoconferencing, and the mundane task of cabling are adding to the bottom line, as clients want to outsource data network and infrastructure management.

Another benefit VARs bring to the table is experience in managing networks, so they are able to balance the needs for stock data networking and the design and QoS requirements for implementing VoIP.

For more:
- Maryland VoIP VARs doing OK. Article

The powers of brand and legacy in the IP telephony world

Doug Mohney — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:15:01 -0500

Brand names and legacy equipment provide their own special inertia to incumbent vendors, all other things being equal. With belt-tightening now a national value, smaller, leaner and meaner upstarts will have the opportunity to displace legacy vendors and legacy solutions - if they can muster a successful communications plan to let people know they exist.

The cliché of 2008 has been "Nobody ever got fired for buying Cisco." The phrase that pays for IP telephony companies in 2009 will be "Give us Cisco and a more affordable alternative." Cisco's success in the marketplace is now a vulnerability. Competitors are going to compare themselves to the top brand in the market place, not the guy standing to next to them in the trenches.

Cisco IP telephony and UC solutions will be used as the benchmark for businesses, but with everyone looking at the bottom line, people are going to want to get more for their money. Just being Cisco isn't going to win business in 2009. You're going to see pounding of the table on support, total cost of ownership and warranties.

Give you a real-world example here at Fierce - We recently replaced the key system here with a new one. One of the options on the table was a new Avaya system or a refurb'ed Cisco one. Price was about the same. Care to guess which won?

Which brings us to the power of legacy. If the brand-X key system has worked for years in the closet without a hiccup (relatively), companies are more likely to go with what they know rather than install something different (Unless, of course, it's Cisco). There may be a long-standing relationship between the business and the vendor (or more likely between the VAR/channel guy and the vendor). Incumbent equipment vendors may offer some sort of discount or trade-in program as a reward for buying in the past. And there's the day-after-day subconscious brand re-enforcement of the vendor's name - it's at the top of the phone.

To defeat the dual powers of brand and legacy in the SMB IP telephony space is an uphill battle. Winners will ultimately have to win three battles: with buyers/end-users, with VAR/channel partners (the guys who are ultimately selling this to the end users), and with the media - the influencers on the buyers and VAR/channel partners.

- Doug

Living with VoIP in the Middle East

Doug Mohney — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:48:19 -0400

IP telephony has been bad news for many Middle Eastern carriers, but regional operators also stand to gain from the technology, says CommsMEA reporting from VoIP World 2008 in Dubai.

With pent up demand for cheaper international calls and growing regulatory reform the across the region, the Middle East and Africa present a huge opportunity for VoIP. It doesn't hurt that there are over 130 million consumers using VoIP and international VoIP minutes already account for 21 percent of total international minutes in 2006. By 2010, VoIP minutes are expected to exceed circuit switched minutes.

Fuelling optimism in the Middle Eastern market is the rapid growth in Internet users and telephony competitive environments in Bahrain, Jordan, Turkey, Palestine and Algeria. Over the past two-and-a-half years, VoIP has captured 60 percent of the international minutes in the Bahrain market and about 40 percent of the revenues.

VoIP services offer immediate costs savings as compared to legacy technology, says one carrier, allowing incumbent operators to mitigate potential losses in a fully competitive market. Savings comes from less labor and decreased capital expenditures to maintain legacy hardware. On the other hand, a transition to VoIP can be painful for an incumbent carrier that may lose both market share and revenues. Staff reductions can also cause problems with unions.

For more:
- Living with VoIP in the Middle East by CommsMEA

Related articles:
Net2Phone drops prices, gets credit for breaking Kuwait VoIP blockade
Cape Verde, South Africa Advance VoIP

VoIP: No News is Good News

Doug Mohney — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 22:43:19 -0400

Savatar has rolled out some 2008 SMB market research statistics on VoIP but a lack of hype in the industry leads Processor.com to conclude that, for VoIP, no news is good news.

Almost all business VoIP customers with 100 or more employees would recommend VoIP to their peers, says Savatar. Of the same group, 57 percent say VoIP service exceeds the reliability of their prior service while 77 percent say the cost of VoIP service is better than what they paid for previously.

VoIP-selling CEOs say they have exhausted the early adopter pool and now need to go mainstream; early adopters take VoIP for granted while the majority of non-buyers don't realize that they need it. SMEs don't realize that VoIP can bring cost savings, plus ease of use and management; there's also a big investment in legacy technology still on the books for some companies. A phone system lifecycle is about seven years.

Most important VoIP feature is auto attendant, followed by UC, say businesses responding to Savatar's study.

For more
- Processor.com editorial on the State of the Industry for VoIP

Related articles:
Marketing mudding VoIP and UC; getting creative
UC Confuses SMBs