In the early stage of a product, when PR departments and sales
teams are driving the hype, a typical strategy is to try and create
a very polarised debate and frame a question as either/or. The
reality that we have seen in the market over countless technology
shifts is much more subtle and usually much more about
both/and.
It is obvious why some channel providers want to paint doom and
gloom and tell us the PBX is dead and cloud is the ONLY solution to
a customer's needs. Many service providers are in a position where
they have invested significant sums in a cloud solution and do not
have the luxury of a range of solutions. It's not surprising that
when you only have a hammer in your toolkit every problem looks
like a nail.
At Pragma we are fortunate to work with some of the UK's best
resellers and our partners have invested significantly in building
highly capable sales and technical teams to make sure they can win
and retain customers. When I talk to our partners they tell me that
the reason they win customers is because they listen. They listen
to what the customer needs. They listen to what the customer is
trying to achieve. They listen to what challenges the customer is
facing. After they have listened and worked hard to really
understand their customer they then design a technology solution
that helps their customer compete and win in their chosen market or
sector. This design stage isn't usually based on some dogmatic
technology bias to cloud or on premise or anything else. It's based
on designing the very best technology they can to meet that
customer's needs. That technology solution typically comprises
multiple vendors for hardware, software and network.
The reseller brings real skill and capability to each and every
customer and that's why the majority of the SMB and mid-market
technology spend in the UK still runs through the channel. The
process of listening and then translating the business need into a
technology solution is a major part of the value the reseller adds.
Small and mid-market businesses trust their reseller to deliver the
right solution at the right price.
The idea that hosted is the only way and that the PBX is dead
just doesn't stack up with the trend we are seeing in the market at
the moment. We have seen the demand for Ericsson-LG iPECS increase
significantly in the last year and have seen our business and that
of our resellers grow and develop. iPECS is a UC technology
platform that supports small, mid-market and enterprise customers
with communications devices, applications and platforms. The fact
that Ericsson-LG can deliver a breadth of technology solutions
across multiple technology areas means we can address the whole
market and build innovative and creative solutions for our
customers with building blocks across iPECS hardware, software,
network connectivity and integrations into Microsoft Lync and
multiple software vendors. At the same time we have also seen the
demand for cloud increase as well and that fits perfectly with our
own cloud strategy.
Pragma are able to offer a range of solutions that can leverage
the best of the public or private cloud, on-premise hardware,
applications or network. Through Ericsson-LG iPECS customers can
choose to use UC, LYNC, specialist contact centre applications or
integrate their telephony into their appications and ultimately use
the very best of the cloud to complement the very best of
on-premise equipment.
Ericsson-LG has developed a cloud strategy that helps its
customers to evolve their telephony infrastructure to meet their
needs rather than rip and replace. Almost all technology shifts
have been far more about evolution than revolution and the shift to
cloud looks like it will be the same.
As hosted telephony is increasingly positioned as the simple, no
hassle reseller opportunity requiring limited sales and engineering
resources we are only left to wonder when an increasingly
commoditised technology delivered by a service provider will
disintermediate the reseller. At the very least it begs the
question when the race for the bottom will end as call minutes are
increasingly offered free and hosted costs are wrapped into the
cost of the handset.
The view from Pragma is it is not about either cloud or
on-premise but much more about delivering an integrated technology
approach using the very best of both cloud, on-premise and whatever
other technologies it takes to help your customer win.