Some things never seem to change. For several decades, competitive providers of communications services, not to mention value added resellers, interconnect companies that install business phone systems, Internet access providers and broadband services providers have found that the small and medium-sized business segment has been the sweet spot for competing successfully with large incumbents. Cable companies now are preparing their own assault on the lower end of the market as well.
The news that Dell now will be selling the Fonality VoIP Phone System through its global SME sales organization, as well as its channel is simply more confirmation of the trend.
At the same time, there is abundant evidence that not all providers are equally advantaged in the SME space as the technological complexity of services intensifies. Some providers used to selling connectivity services with a clear network demarcation are going to find the going much tougher as the demarc moves to the desktop and the handset.
VoIP, in particular, requires more active assessment, management, monitoring and installation activity and support. And that's just at the network layer. As voice and communications become more embedded in actual end user applications, the level of complexity will take another leap. So, going forward, every provider inevitably will wind up more involved than perhaps desired in all sorts of implementation, optimization and management activities.
More skill and more cost are the inevitable result.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Dell, Fonality Target SME Market
Labels:
business VoIP,
small business VoIP
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
It Will be Hard to Measure AI Impact on Knowledge Worker "Productivity"
There are over 100 million knowledge workers in the United States, and more than 1.25 billion knowledge workers globally, according to one A...
-
We have all repeatedly seen comparisons of equity value of hyperscale app providers compared to the value of connectivity providers, which s...
-
It really is surprising how often a Pareto distribution--the “80/20 rule--appears in business life, or in life, generally. Basically, the...
-
One recurring issue with forecasts of multi-access edge computing is that it is easier to make predictions about cost than revenue and infra...
1 comment:
The one think that this leaves out is installation and implementation. I&I is the difference between people signing up for a free trial or downloading software but never trying it. Can PBX be bought off the web?
Post a Comment