Technology Reseller - v19 2019

37 VOX POP technolog y reseller.co.uk Jeff Blackey, VP, UCaaS Solutions Marketing, PGi : There are certainly a lot of Unified Communications providers, which makes for a very fragmented market; whether there are too many depends on both perspective and objectives. A big challenge in the market, and specifically the channel, is how to differentiate one offering from another. With a large number of providers already in the space, what is different about your offering versus every other one? Customers aren’t going to evaluate more than one hundred different providers, so how do you get noticed and become part of the consideration set? Nick Wright, Commercial Manager, Westcon Avaya : It’s a lively and fast- moving market, with the new ‘born in the cloud’ vendors helping to shape its direction and deliver more customer choice. There is plenty of innovation and many opportunities for partners, especially with the cloud evolutions from traditional vendors delivering a huge refresh opportunity. There are solutions for every scenario and budget, and with current growth rates I’m not convinced we’re at an inflection point of excess supply. Gareth Long, Head of Hosted Voice Programme, Daisy Wholesale : Unified Communications is a Channel buzzword at the moment, so it is no surprise that partners have so many providers to choose from. Although I don’t think there are too many UC providers, I do see many Channel partners struggling with the wide array of features and applications out there. This is making it difficult for resellers to find a single provider that will meet all their customers’ needs. Many resellers are entering into multi- vendor relationships, meaning they have to endure all the complexities that come with that, including multiple contracts, prices, billing arrangements, helpdesks and sales teams. This unnecessarily complicates a solution that is designed to simplify and streamline business communications. By choosing a provider with a comprehensive UC solution, resellers can work more efficiently to secure more business, spending less time dealing with the hassle of multi-vendor strategies. Mike Adams, Channel Manager, Zoom : There are many UC vendors in the market, and the issue for the channel is there is also a lot of confusion as to which solution to recommend and sell. To become a trusted advisor to customers, channel partners need to understand the differences and nuances of each solution. In reality, many UC solutions are quite similar to each other and offer lots of overlapping features, so resellers are often unclear about the true benefits of one solution over the other, and will usually recommend solutions based on their margin potential and relationships with vendors, rather than the benefits to the end-user. On the other hand, Zoom has a very unique and differentiated solution, with a superior user experience and customer satisfaction, so Zoom stands above all other UC solutions. Our challenge is to educate the channel about these differences, and to allow them to try it for themselves so they can truly embrace the Zoom experience and understand why customers love it so much. Channel partners are customers too, and they all love Zoom as soon as they try it, so it’s natural for them to want to sell it to their customers. Paul Clarke, Channel Manager North UK, 3CX : The issue is not necessarily that there are too many providers. It’s more a matter of too much ambiguity about what UC solutions include/don’t include, what is classed as an add-on with extra cost, and pricing structures. There is more transparency needed, especially for UC, which encompasses so many different facets of communication. Many vendors develop products that defeat the whole purpose of unified communications by segregating features onto multiple platforms, which of course makes complete systems more costly and more complicated to run. Resellers need a product that can cater to all types of business customer, whether it be on-premise or in the cloud, for 2,000 users or 20. It needs the manageability and power to perform at all levels and the features to satisfy end-users and business goals in all industries. A good UC solution needs to be feature-rich, reliable, flexible and easy to manage. There are a lot of confusing options to navigate, and it’s the confusion that is the problem. That’s why 3CX is very transparent about our licensing and pricing. What you see is what you get, and we’re always improving the product to bring the features that customers need all together into one platform. Steven Ansell, Collaboration Architecture Lead, Comstor : It comes down to definitions in a way, as it can get confusing. If UC is today’s VoIP solutions – on-prem or hosted call-control solutions – then I don’t think there are too many providers, and the main players like Cisco, Avaya and Mitel are still very prominent. However, when you Continued... Mike Adams Gareth Long