2020 and beyond MARKET REPORT
“This will mean nothing to most resellers and whilst there will be no impact for a few months, it could be a
Tsunami that starts as a ripple on the other side of the Atlantic and threatens to eventually wash away a large
portion of the hosted voice market in the UK.” Andrew Dickinson, MD of Jola
The public cloud market — cloud apps (software-as-a-service SaaS);
cloud development and data platforms (platform-as-a-service PaaS);
and cloud infrastructure (infrastructure-as-a-service IaaS) — will reach
$411 billion by 2022.
Andrew Dickinson, MD, Jola
the revenue generation potential
of value-added services. ere
will be an increasing shift
away from resellers being seen
just as technology suppliers
towards them being perceived
as consultative, trusted advisors
that provide end users with
strategic support cost-e ectively.
Rather than simply selling a
cloud migration package then
moving on, this approach
will unlock a major revenue
opportunity for the channel to
embed themselves in the end
user’s mind as trusted advisors
who will support their ongoing
cloud journey and optimise its
value for their business.”
2020 – the year of fi bre
Given Jeremy Corbyn’s latest
bombshell that Labour plans to
nationalise Openreach if they
manage to swing the General
Election coming up this month,
the market could look extremely
di erent in 2020. All sorts of
questions remain about what
would happen to the altnet
community, many of whom
have already invested millions
in their bre deployments.
We spoke to contributors
before this announcement was
made.
Nick Powell, Sales Director,
Sky Business Communications,
commented “ e biggest issues
impacting the wholesale market
now and in the next 12 months
is the increased desire for more
and more bandwidth.
“Bandwidth growth is
reaching up to 40% year on
year. Businesses are moving
away from 100Mb circuits and
we are seeing more demand for
1Gb+ services. Increasingly, we
will see more and more demand
for 10Gb services nationwide,
and therefore network service
providers need to be investing
and building today, ready
for the demand of future
>
platforms into one o ering:
Microsoft O ce 365 with
Microsoft Teams and Cloudya,
our cloud telephone system.”
Tim Mercer, CEO of Vapour
Cloud, commented “For the
last four years our business
has been built on the basis of
strategic partnerships within
the Channel, rather than us
pursuing end user contracts
ourselves. is model isn’t
for everyone, but I predict
that this ‘David supporting
Goliath’ approach – as I’ve
seen it referenced in the
space – will become far more
common in 2020. e power
of collaboration has hit the
headlines a lot in recent weeks
– not least because of the Avaya
and RingCentral move – and I
don’t think we’ve heard the last
of some signi cant moves in the
Channel.”
Andrew Dickinson, MD of
Jola says “By the time you read
this Microsoft will probably
have made their Phone System
bolt-on to Teams available to
users of O ce365 Business
Premium. is will mean
nothing to most resellers and
whilst there will be no impact
for a few months, it could be a
Tsunami that starts as a ripple
on the other side of the Atlantic
and threatens to eventually
wash away a large portion of the
hosted voice market in the UK.
ere are just under 6,000 voice
resellers in the UK and around
26,000 MSPs. Most hosted
voice is sold by the resellers
because MSPs are typically
wary of ‘mucky minutes’,
fraud, and the dark arts of
billing, numbering and porting.
However nearly all MSPs sell
O ce365 licences, of which
95% are Business Premium,
for around £9 a month. If they
can add a fully featured phone
system with unlimited UK
calls for £12, most of them
will. Especially if numbering
and billing is managed by their
CSP. Enlightened voice resellers
are already putting in place
the insurance policy of Direct
Routing, a third-party product
that adds dial-tone to Microsoft
Teams.”
Dave Hawkins, Head of
Channel Sales at Kcom added
“We predict further blurred
lines between supplier roles
across the industry as businesses
grapple for a portion of cloudbased
revenues. We are seeing
cloud providers moving into
traditional telco spaces with the
evolution of apps such as MS
Teams and Amazon Cloud, and
likewise we see traditional voice
providers diversifying into the
cloud space.
“For the channel to thrive
in this emerging marketplace,
partners need to capitalise on
CCTV SECURITY
Nimans is gearing up for huge growth in the security and CCTV sector,
spearheaded by a new dedicated division. Richard Carter, Sales
Director at Nimans highlighted: “The launch of the department is
designed to help more customers move into a sector which already
signifi cantly eclipses the traditional PBX comms systems arena.
“There are an estimated 4.25 million CCTV cameras installed in the
UK as the security sector continues to grow and diversify, based on
much more than just catching criminals.
It’s a £3bn market which is set to double in value over the next fi ve
years.”
He emphasised: “Security is a natural extension of a reseller’s
existing IP skills and end point sales. It’s a growing market – both in
times of recession when crime increases and in periods of economic
growth with more budget spend. Furthermore, it’s a diverse and
dynamic sector with many different solutions such as health and
safety, market analysis for retail, staff trends, heatmaps and
preventative equipment monitoring.”
www.commsbusiness.co.uk December 2019 | Comms Business Magazine | 25
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