Channel Solutions
My rst experience of Voice
With a quick glance back to the beginnings of VoIP, Ian Hunter says that while the market drivers and the routes
to market are changing, the remaining underlying constant is still connectivity
over IP occurred at the
old Telecom Managers’
Association (TMA)
conference in Brighton around
1992 on an exhibition stand of
an Israeli company whose name I
have long forgotten.
Israel was quick out of the
blocks with business-based
VoIP applications and certainly
ahead of UK and US rms of
the time. I recall US rms were
still getting excited about PC to
PC based VoIP applications for
propeller heads sitting in their
lofts that were likewise excited
about making savings on longdistance
calls. Israel, on the
other hand, was literally talking
IP PBX applications while the
rest of the world was still trying
to get their PBX systems ISDN
enabled.
Of course, much has
changed, and the days of ISDN
are nally, and thankfully,
numbered.
Today there are many routes
for organisations to get an IP
based telephony solution; SIP
trunk enabling on-premise PBX
gives them an extra lease of
life and gets around the ISDN
problem. Hosted telephony
solutions have been in our
market for around fteen years
whilst cloud based telephony is
gaining traction.
e key to getting any
of these solutions to deliver
a satisfactory performance
– a user voice experience no
dierent to the rock solid
ISDN, proved dicult in the
past due to less than suitable
connectivity solutions being
sold to users – albeit a lot of
that blame lies at the feet of
network suppliers getting away
with disingenuous marketing
claims for the veracity of their
circuits. Again, much of this
has given way to appropriate
connectivity for the job as a
result of advertising standards
being raised.
As IP based telephony
progressed beyond being a PBX
replacement and becoming
a communications platform
upon which a multitude of
applications concurrently
run the voice application has
progressively become that old
chestnut of being ‘just another
application running on the
network’.
However, that connectivity
element has become even more
critical to the end user. Poor
connectivity today impacts
more than the voice telephony,
it aects user e-commerce
applications, tracking company
nance and that seemingly
ever-present commercial activity
track. If you mess with the
functionality of any of these
applications you’ll have the
CEO on the phone biting your
ears o quicker than you’d
imagine.
So, connectivity remains
the oil that lubricates the gears
turning in the commercial
engine of almost every reseller
client. erefore, choosing your
connectivity partner has never
been so important as it is today.
Looking ahead, analyst
forecasts are understandably a
bit thin on the ground. Gartner,
who had been forecasting only
six months ago that worldwide
IT spending will hit $3.9T in
2020 are now shifting their
methodology to ‘range-based
forecasting’ which they describe
as a worthy alternative in light
of Covid-19.
Short term, it’s easy to
pick out the highyers in the
communications mix. Anything
that eectively enables remote
working and collaboration
so that includes the likes
of video conferencing and
unied communications as a
service. Robust connectivity
is de-rigueur to keep the
scattered army of home workers
connected with their conference
calls and access to the company
network of applications.
As the term ‘the new normal’
enters our everyday vocabulary
channels will be learning some
form of best practice to get their
IP Telephony solutions and
other portfolio products out the
door to customers and begin
new monthly billing programs
to boost their revenues.
I’m sure we’ll be getting the
details on those best practices
over the wires pretty soon and
if there is one thing you can be
sure of it is that the channel is
both innovative and resourceful
in overcoming any problems
that can be thrown at it.
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