Technology Reseller - v19 2019

01732 759725 36 VOX POP Paul Taylor, Sales Director, Voiceflex : There’s a great deal of segmentation within the channel. With a PABX connected to ISDN/PSTN, we had rules and regulations, with 99% of applications connected directly to BT. Now, there are far fewer regulations, which means a more fragmented market. Channel partners are now service providers with their own hosted applications servicing their end users – Voiceflex itself is SIP carrier to many channel partners’ hosted applications. Of course, this brings more fragmentation, with white labelling raising the question of whether the partner or a hosted provider is providing the core and a SIP carrier providing the breakout service? Then, there are hosted providers offering telephone applications in the cloud. Are they single instance? Do they have a session board controller (SBC)? Are they multi-tenanted? Is failover provided? There is a lot of smoke and mirrors. The problem is most channel partners are told by hosted providers that ‘it’s hosted in the cloud’. Yet, not all applications are the same and the channel partner often doesn’t have the experience to know what to ask, until the first couple of applications are installed. Then the questions start. John McKindland, Head of Solution Sales, Nimans : There’s lots of choice in the market, which has its good and bad points. Choice and competition are undoubtedly good for a reseller, but picking the right supplier is key. You need to choose one that can provide most, if not all, of your product requirements. Someone much like ourselves. With a vast product portfolio, we can supply everything you need. Whether that’s an IP end point, headset or collaborative software on a PABX, we can supply it all. This brings continuity of supply and continuity of relationship, which makes us easier to work with. Resellers deal with one Account Manager and one field-based resource who understand their business. It’s not just about product supply, but the back-end services they can take advantage of. There is confusion in the market, which we can help demystify. If a reseller uses supplier X for one product and supplier Y for another, they lose the ability to have end-to-end technical support and continuity with customer-facing support. Obviously, cost is an important issue but being able to negotiate means they don’t need to shop around. Good service counts. Talking Unified Communications Dave Reynolds, UK Managing Director, Xelion : Whilst there are several suppliers of UC hosted telephony platforms, suppliers may have very little control over the platform that they supply to resellers, as they also ‘white-label’, reselling the service themselves in their own brand. We would advise all resellers to understand who the underlying developer behind a service is, how flexible they are when it comes to partner feedback and who makes the final decisions on both the road map and final product. First generation UC hosted voice services provide a very closed environment where they and not the reseller have the control and dictate the end product. The most customisation the majority offer is to put a logo in the corner of a portal. As hosted voice adoption has increased, so has the skill set of the resellers. We believe that both large and small resellers yearn for more control and flexibility to deliver a service they want to sell. That is why Xelion has an open architecture that puts the comms provider back in control, allowing them to build their own comprehensive comms proposition with the flexibility to set their own path and destiny, something no other hosted voice vendor is trying to achieve with the channel. It’s boom time for unified communications. Everyone seems to be piling into the market and urging resellers to do the same. Or is that just a perception – or misconception? What is the true picture of the current market? Are there too many providers – and does it matter if there are? How can resellers maintain their margins when customers are being offered so much choice? We ask industry experts for their thoughts on the burgeoning UC scene Technology Reseller: Are there currently too many Unified Communications providers and why might this be a problem for the channel? Paul Taylor Dave Reynolds