Monday, July 06, 2015

UC is Becoming Teamware


In a press release, Birch says TotalCloud PBX Sales Rise 70% in 2015. I have no idea how that is possible when it takes them forever to port AND that the second quarter just ended. Unless sales were like $100 per month in 4Q2014. "Birch mentions that their metered TotalCloud PBX plan starts at just $15.99 per seat."


If you are looking for more pricing and review, PCMag has Broadvoice Cloud PBX Review & Rating. This is the BSFT shop that bought IKANO.


Now that isn't really UC&C, but I figured for the ITSPs it would be good info. The UC&C space is heating up, but it really seems to be 8x8 and RC making all the noise. You don't hear about Alteva or Evolve or Thinking Phones or even Shoretel Sky making moves around UC&C. Citrix buying Grasshopper was a move. Cisco and Microsoft are the big names battling it out as they try to figure it out. Even ININ and Avaya have been quiet. This means that you have time to put the bundle and message together!


RC buys Glip to go deeper into the business UC market. This will move them toward UC&C, which is pivoting to mean teamware for the emphasis on collaboration. RC will re-brand Glip as RC Teams, according to this interview with the RC CEO Vlad.


Most of the noise in US is about either mobility or WebRTC.


The WebRTC noise is about browser based real-time comms (RTC). 3CX (a Windows based premise PBX) rolled out a new version of WebMeeting that uses WebRTC. WebRTC allows users to make audio and video calls and do some screen sharing via a browser (Firefox or Chrome) without plugins.


On the mobility front, Genband is pushing forward with fring as a mobile app and softphone as well as a cloud based ecosystem for its customers. It follows the BroadCloud plan. There has been a lot of chatter about the demise of the desk phone. It's just chatter, since a majority of phones are location based (receptionist, break room, lobby, warehouse)- and Boomers and some Gen X still want their desk phones. We need more FMC to bridge calls back and forth from mobile to desk. I think desk phones will be replaced by android phones and UC headsets that seamlessly work with mobile apps like UC-One or Skype. It isn't seamless yet.


And lastly in the UC space, the editors at NoJitter finally agree with me for a change: Integration Is the Name of the Game.
As Hosted VoIP became Hosted PBX, then Hosted UC and now UC&C, the integration to make the pieces seamlessly work together on a laptop, tablet, smartphone and desk will be crucial for the winner in this space. Some ITSPs are shifting to cloud services like VPS and even SAAS. I think that the working UC&C bundle that is as simple as the iPhone or Join.me is going to be the clear cut winner.


You need to be pushing SMS to all DIDs; softphones; headsets; why not sell tablets + softphone + bluetooth? Audio and web conferencing and screen share and IM/chat/SMS with Presence as well as hosted email, fax-to-email, vociemail-to-email, call loogs, recording, analytics, portal and Sharepoint or something like Google Docs. Sounds like a lot but your job isn't to deliver dial-tone -- that is the basic requirement to play the game -- your job is to deliver a communication platform that workers can use with some training to be productive and flexible. That is your job - technology provider - not dial-tone provider.


Fone.do writes that voicemail is dead. Indeed a major bank dumped a large portion of their voicemail system. Everything is dying.


Not All Deployments Are Created Equal (HPBX) by Edgewater.




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