MARKET REPORT Hosted Telephony
“This should urge business leaders to make the change to hosted telephony now because, should the second
wave happen or they’re placed into local lockdown, then they could find themselves at a serious disadvantage if
they’re unequipped and unable to trade.” Julien Parven, Director of Indirect Partners at Daisy Communications
we already see in many other
markets start to creep in to the
communications sector. e
end of ISDN, the pandemic,
environmental concerns over
travel and other factors have
conjoined to make this the
perfect opportunity to sell
hosted telephony services.”
Richard Potts, Managing
Director of North Supply,
commented “ e evolution
of the market will, I believe,
be in uenced by a number of
factors.
Right now, businesses are still
responding to the challenges
of COVID-19 and facing the
primary objective of keeping
their employees safe. We all
recognise that there has been
a tremendous rush to place
many employees in a working
from home environment to
maintain some form of business
continuity.
Progressively we will see
many of these sta return to
the o ce but it is likely that
there will be a new and di erent
form of ongoing work patterns
that will see a hybrid and more
exible model deployed; one
where meetings comprise a
cluster of people in the o ce
and other clusters of employees
working remotely.
Cloud based applications
such as hosted telephony
will continue to o er exible
solutions for this scenario.
Had there been no such
thing as COVID-19 I believe
much of the focus in the
short to medium term would
now be focussed on Arti cial
Intelligence and Machine
learning (AI/ML) as automation
Dave Reynolds of Xelion
can do a lot of the heavy lifting
when it comes increasing
productivity.”
Bart Delgado, MD of Akixi
commented “Remote working
is the new norm for so many
now, and that is only going to
increase as businesses forced
into using hosted solutions due
to the pandemic, grow to realise
that these tools do actually
enable their teams to stay
connected and their business
to operate e ciently away the
o ce, reducing the requirement
for expensive real estate. Twitter
and Fujitsu are among the
companies who have recently
announced permanent work
from home plans.
For the market, this will
mean understanding the full
repertoire of hosted products
that complement the core
o ering of communications to
give the partner a distinguishing
factor in a crowded market.
ose organisations who put in
the time now to understand the
options, either independently
or via expert advice, will be able
to keep their head above the
water as the next year or two go
by.”
ED SAYS…
It’s a great time to be a expert in the
communications market. The Partner Channel
has so much opportunity to evolve and thrive.
I believe businesses will continually turn to
technology to pull themselves through the
situation and continue to serve customers.
Adam Cathcart, MD of 9
Group’s Partner Division
strict regulatory compliance,
and the resilience of the core
infrastructure itself, ensuring
maximum uptime and
availability of voice services.”
Ian Rowan of Wildix said, “I
had an example just today where
an end-user had been using
Teams remotely and enabled
direct routing to allow calls in
and out of the Teams client, now
they are back in the o ce they
needed a solution to connect the
door phone and direct routing
has no way of achieving this, so
they had to port these numbers
again to their SIP service for
a function most people take
for granted. Although at the
time of total o ce closures this
seemed like a great and simple
idea, now that o ces are now
opening back up and people are
returning back to their standard
daily processes then more and
more situations like this will
become an issue. Integrations
still allow for this but are limited
on the feature set made available
through Microsoft and their
API’s. Either way, both options
will remain a real option for
many users and suit their needs
in the mainstream.”
The next 12-24 months
e Channel loves a prediction,
here we asked the market what
they expected to see out of the
next 12-24 months.
Mayur Pitamber, Senior
Solutions Product Marketing
Manager, 8x8 said “Teams
adoption will continue to grow
rapidly, and it will sit at the
centre of many businesses’
UC strategies. We also expect
demand for Teams Direct
Routing solutions to increase,
as customers expect business
standard, high quality voice
calling capabilities from the
service, no matter where they
are working from. is upward
trend will expand opportunities
for partners, and create
additional upsell opportunities
for Teams including contact
centre, analytics and call
recording.”
Adam Cathcart, MD of
9 Group’s Partner Division
commented, “ e increasing
reduction in the availability
of legacy PSTN and ISDN
connectivity from Openreach as
their stop sell initiative gathers
pace, will force an increase in the
migration to IP based telephony.
e wider availability of robust
5G connectivity will support
the changeover to more remote
and home-based working, with
o ces increasingly becoming
meeting hubs rather than
permanent places of work.
Forthcoming improvements
to mobile applications and
softphone clients will support
the user acceptance of the
bene ts of hosted telephony over
traditional xed line products.”
Gregg Knowles,
Technology Director at plan.
com commented “Digital
transformation is late to come
to voice but the opportunities
are endless, as we see mobile,
xed and cloud hosted services
converge as one routing the
numbers, be they mobile or
landline into ever varying
endpoints. A user wants a call to
go to Teams – sure! An app on
their phone? Yep, a desk phone?
Not a problem – to a sim card –
also not a problem, all of them
to tandem ring? Why not!
By creating a truly bespoke
system for a customer’s needs
and tailoring it exactly for
what they need it to do, digital
transformation is powering
not just Work From Home but
Work From Anywhere.
Dave Reynolds of Xelion
said, “We expect to see demand
for more exible contracts to
support rises and falls in users
and the on-demand models
34 | Comms Business Magazine | August 2020 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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