Changing Landscape of IT, Telecom and UC – Let the Buyer Beware – Part 1

We recently did a mid-year review of the UC sector for a UCStrategies podcast to provide commentary on the state of UC half way through 2016. 

Upon reflecting on the discussion with my UCStrategies peers, and analyzing our end-user acquisitions activities and vendor selection results (for 2015 and the first half of 2016), we noticed some major shifts in or client’s vendor selections.

I thought it would be interesting to try to identify what was happening, and also why, for our readers.

In the past, the majority of our telecom, network and contact center technology solution acquisitions were awarded to various telecom carriers, or directly with the manufacturers of various equipment parts of the solutions. 

During the past few years, most of the major telecom manufacturers have moved to having their primary customer sales and support delivered via their channel partners, with the manufacturers providing engineering and sales support to the channel. This trend now seems to apply disregarding sector.

Some of the manufacturers still sell direct to their large global accounts, with the channels providing deployment and ongoing support for local sites when required. These global accounts generally expect this type of “one throat to choke” support contract and also expect to have direct access to R&D engineers, labs, and 2^nd and 3^rd level support due to their size and buying power.

Due to the shift by the manufacturers to push sales and support out to channel partners (whether IT, network or telecom oriented channels), we have observed some interesting challenges. 

The main one is to find channel partners that can successfully design, deploy and support full UC environments involving telecom-oriented voice, telecom apps, contact center integrated with messaging, calendaring, presence and collaboration apps all working together.   

The challenge is exacerbated by the customer expectation that the channel partner is able to define, design, install and support appropriate network solutions that can carry and adapt to the increased network requirements of a full blown UC environment.

The gap we see most frequently missing from channel partners’ capabilities, in moving from traditional telephony and contact center environments to full blown UC solutions, is the serious lack of telecom knowledge and expertise to design, program and manage number planning, auto attendant/IVR, SIP design and overall telecom management expertise.

With the move to UC applications, many organizations are moving to individual Direct-Inward-Dialing numbers (DID) and using single-number-reach to route to other numbers/locations… whether mobile, home office or other corporate location.    

The trend to individual DIDs brings many positive benefits, (cost reductions and productivity increases), but also brings potential challenges to be able to safely and reliably provide 9-1-1 caller identity and location information. Again, this is an area that not many IT or network professionals have had to deal with or have experience in, but it is critical to minimize corporate risk.

Part 2 will provide guidance and recommendations to the tech sector on what clients are looking for, and what their expectations are in order to earn their business.

As always, I welcome comments and feedback from the technology industry and its clients.

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