“We are beginning to see some significant changes in the market. There is much more awareness and interest in cloud based solutions and unified communications and it seems that the vendor offers are beginning to be positioned much more strongly around these two technologies. However, we are not seeing any wholesale trend to move away from CPE solutions and sales of our Wave IP PBX solution remains strong.
There is significant interest in cloud based solutions in the widest sense, not just hosted PBX services. In the unified messaging space ICON is launching MESSAGEmanager on Demand. This is a cloud based FAX solution which provides enterprise level document management solutions for FAX. More than a FAX solution the MMoD platform integrates closely with the enterprise business applications to provide every employee in the organisation with fax management through email, CRM and ERP applications.
In those sites which have hosted PBX services or have offices which connect to a remote IP-PBX the Polycom IP DECT mobility solutions are a popular add-on. Recent additions to the Polycom KIRK DECT range can scale up to over 4000 users.
The market for PBX solutions is now almost entirely IP focused and sales of our Wave IP PBX solution remain strong. The Wave IP solution, which was awarded product of the year by TMC offers Channel Partners a profitable and highly competitive solution to the me-too solutions in head to head competitive bids.”
The Wave IP solution offers an out of the box solution which includes a comprehensive range of integrated Unified Communications applications as well as call recording. The Wave IP 500 is the entry level solution for businesses wanting up to 50 extensions and offers the same level of functionality and integrated applications as the Wave IP 2500.
Mark believes that the way forward is to offer the core UC applications and tools as an integrated package and says
“The integrated approach benefits both the end user and the reseller. The reseller is able to present an easy to understand single platform business solution to the customer whilst the customer benefits from being able to buy a single box answer to their problem”.
The Vertical Wave communications platform is an example of the single box approach. It integrates applications with an IP-PBX on a single platform, thereby avoiding the additional cost and management overhead associated with setting up and managing multiple servers.
The single box Wave platform includes a range of Base applications which are ready to run at no extra cost. These include the core UC applications of desktop call management, visual voicemail, presence management, unified messaging, basic conferencing, auto attendant and call recording. Unlike many competitive systems, the Wave platform provides call recording, archiving and search capabilities to all users without any additional software license.
Also in the single box are some ready-to-run and ready-to-license applications which extend the functionality of the Wave platform. These include a contact centre, conference manager, and voice XML server. Because they are integrated in the single box solution they can be enabled on demand.
Mark summed up by saying
“Vendors have adopted a number of different approaches to delivering VoIP and UC solutions. We believe that in the 50-100 user market the best solution is a single box integrated approach as used by the Wave platform. A single box solution means that everything works together with minimum effort. The alternative approach of integrating the separate applications into a single solution could be too great a drain on the resources of a small business.”
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