MARKET REPORT Hosted & Cloud Telephony
“The fact is there is hardly any organisation, regardless of size or industry affiliation that is not
SOUND BYTES
How can hosted telephony resellers differentiate their offerings other than by price?
John McKindland, Head of
Solutions, Nimans
Justin Blaine NTA Hosted has to be sold as a solution, too many resellers are trying to displace the PBX and
Dominic Norton, Sales Director
at Spitfire
Dave Reynolds, Xelion UK
Managing Director
Tim Mercer, CEO of Vapour Cloud This is definitely the era of the managed service, inclusive of the telephony, networks, SIP
Emily Nerland of Masergy Simple concepts to consider is the value-add you offer as the reseller. Is it convenience,
Colin Gill, Akixi Product Manager Differentiation comes from the hosted telephony offering being one part of an overall
Myles Leach, MD of NFON UK Resellers can definitely further differentiate themselves with having the best-in-class
ProVu Sales Director, Craig
Herrett.
telephony do the same job and,
to be honest, on the whole both
can work in similar ways. For
example, it’s possible to pick up
your handset from a PBX system
and go and work from home.
As long as you have the phone
congured for remote working
and the correct remote license
for the phone on the PBX and
possibly some sort of session
border controller or gateway
device installed at the PBX
site and the inbound routing/
rewalls congured for the
concerned about digital transformation”
The key for a reseller is to have access to lots of different features and functionalities
that an end user will require as their business continues to grow. It could be PCI
compliance on call recording for example.
ISDN lines by reducing the current expenditure of the customer, this is quite simply why a
race to the bottom occurs!
Voice quality – ensuring that the solution is designed to deliver consistent end-to-end call
quality. The data connectivity network used to deliver the application reliably is essential
to an effective solution.
By providing a hosted telephony platform that puts channel resellers in the driving seat,
Xelion allows the comms provider to offer customers a service tailored to their needs, that
they cannot find elsewhere.
and wrap-around customer support.
customer experience, the extended portfolio offering and expertise or even simply the
model of sale? What is your special sauce?
solution – a solution which can be tailored to effectively meet a user’s needs.
customer service and helping to educate customers on the many benefits of shifting their
voice communications to the cloud.
The best way is to add to the product wrap and to offer other business services such as
connectivity, utilities, IT Support etc. This way rather than as a pure telephony provider
they could be a business support service encompassing a number of elements enabling
the value to be in ‘One throat to choke’ for the end user.
connection. On the other hand,
to do the same on most hosted
systems, as we all know, just pick
up the handset and take it home.
As long as you have internet
connectivity and a means to
power the phone, away you go.”
Myles Leach, MD of NFON
UK believes that for resellers
the key benet is revenue
opportunities.
“As well as being incredibly
easy to deploy and maintain,
hosted telephony oers huge
benets in terms of building
Myles Leach, MD of NFON UK
customer loyalty and enabling
long-term predictable
annuity revenues for minimal
investment.For customers the
key benet is mobility – the
ability to work from anywhere
at any time.e fact is there
is hardly any organisation,
regardless of size or industry
aliation that is not concerned
about digital transformation
– and cloud communications
are an essential building block
of any viable digital strategy to
enable sta to work exibly.”
ED SAYS…
Whoah! My initial reaction when speaking to channel suppliers was that the
arguments against taking a hosted/cloud solution and the reasons given for why
the PBX is so prevalent have not changed much over the last ten years. Reliability
and sales commissions are legacy objections aren’t they? It might seem not but the
counter sales arguments certainly have progressed.
device. is allows more exible
working patterns and greater
productivity for users.
e channel can benet
by partnering with a hosted
telephony provider that oers an
open platform architecture that
channel partners can congure
to their unique customer needs.
Xelion has open RESTful APIs
allowing third-party apps such
as MS Exchange and Oce 365
to be easily integrated seamlessly
with the service.”
Iain Sinnott at VanillaIP
suggests that for users there
are two main wins but they
cover the two biggest business
expenses.
“Firstly they can optimise the
productivity of each member
of sta through the delivery
of a tailored technology mix.
Secondly they can optimise
the management of their
customers experience blending
voice and text communications
management, sta monitoring
and training, exible working
options required to attract
and retain the best sta and
compliant recording to back up
original customer discussions.”
Emily Nerland of Masergy,
says that for end users, the top
benet in her mind is far and
away the ease of path to upgrade
– both in functionality and scale.
“Users can grow in line with
the technology as it’s a natural
by-product of the subscription
to the service. With hosted
telephony, system upgrades
– some of which are critically
important like security – will be
added as and when they drop.
e same can be said for adding
or removing users. In either case,
there’s no requirement for extra
parts, which reduces costs and
time to deploy. e end user
ends up with the newest and
best version regardless of when
they signed up for the service.
It’s essentially how we consume
almost all tech today via our
personal devices.”
Colin Gill, Akixi Product
Manager, says his top pick for a
user would be ease of exibility.
“Done properly, at their
core, both PBX and hosted
26 | Comms Business Magazine | July 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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