The future of telecommunications platforms or Hosted versus CPE solutions

Cloud based or CPE solutions, which one will prevail?

Mark Shane, Sales Director at ICON says.  

 “Cloud based hosted telephony will not displace CPE PBX telephone solutions in the short, medium or long term.  The last time ICON looked at the market hosted solutions accounted for only around 10% of the total.  That is significant, but given the time hosted solutions have been available it’s not the performance one would expect of a revolutionary displacement solution some claim it to be.”  

"ICON supplies the channel with the Wave CPE IP-PBX solution, but” says Mark “we are not talking up the market just because we supply CPE solutions.  It’s because of our experience in supplying the endpoints market that we are convinced that CPE solutions are here to stay” 

ICON provides endpoint solutions that can be deployed in traditional CPE environments or as a mobility upgrade for the desk endpoint provided with the hosted solution.   Few of the Spectralink solutions are being installed on hosted solutions.  The majority, if not all, are going onto CPE equipment. 

These Spectralink handset solutions can also be deployed in remote offices in a quasi-hosted solution by connecting them remotely to the CPE IP-PBX at head office. However, most companies opt to provide remote office communications using the multi-site capability of the IP-PBX solutions such as the Wave IP-PBX solutions.

“In the channel the popularity of hosted telephony does not seem to be as great as the hype would suggest” says Mark

Microsoft Lync not a meteoric success

 “Microsoft Lync has not been the meteoric success it was claimed it was going to be a few years back.” Says Mark  

ICON distribute the only Microsoft approved voice mobility endpoint solution for Lync solutions and although pundits claim that Microsoft is one of the top 3 suppliers next to Cisco and Avaya, ICON is not seeing this reflected in its sales of Spectralink handsets for Lync.  

 “However,” says Mark “Lync is one of the main solutions in market and the fact the channel has not embraced this solution as fully as it could does not mean that it will not become one of the top channel solutions in the long term.  ICON is already geared up for Lync’s success and can provide and support channel partners with Spectralink handset solutions needed by Lync”

The future is a smart PBX  

Hosted solutions have not traditionally competed with the CPE solutions distributed by ICON and long-term their impact on our Channel Partner CPE business is not expected to change radically from what it is today.  Hosted telephony is not a disruptive technology that will change the landscape forever.  Nevertheless, it does have a place in the market and offers valuable solution for some customers. 

Looking at the market from the perspective of a hosted PBX or CPE PBX is as outdated as looking at an android or IoS handset and seeing only a telephone.  Like cell phones, PBX’s have morphed into platforms for running business apps and delivering solutions.  The future is not one of hybrid PBX solutions. It is a future of “smart” PBX’s.   Smart PBX’s, such as Wave IP, which, amongst other things, integrate with cloud based or on premises based business applications,  will manage the communications services of your road warriors and report on the performance of your advertising.

You can see this happening today.  The “smart” PBX Wave IP solution is used by US automotive dealerships as an adjunct to their DMS/CRM solutions.  With it, they track the performance of advertising campaigns, manage the workload on the parts and service departments and much more – they also use it to make calls. 

Market Report - PBX & Communications Platforms

Unified Communications PBX is now a mature product and those vendors who are going to offer a UC solution already have an established and proven product line. Competition is now moving to developing sector specific solutions and offering extended support services. Leading this move is Vertical Communications who hold a strong position in the global retail sector and have set new standards in the market by providing 5-year warranty on solutions hardware.

It is the customer facing business sectors that are hungry for the UC applications and ICON believes that throughout 2015 growth in the UC market will come from the customer-facing businesses. 

Retail -- Retail is a key market for UC solutions such as Wave IP. Customers in large global department stores have invested heavily in UC solutions. Likewise, garden centres, automotive dealers and other customer centric business are all seeing the benefits of the UC applications. 

Automotive -- Vertical Communications, the makers of the UC solution Wave IP, has launched and presented an automotive focused solution at the 2015 NADA the National Automotive Dealers Association in the US and in 2014 teamed up with Spectralink wireless to offer a UC wireless solution for retail and other customers. This sector focused solution strategy is expected to continue throughout 2015 as vendors of UC solutions look to find and dominate a sector.

Not surprisingly, the customer facing sectors of retail, hospitality and automotive are the big opportunities for UC solutions such as Wave IP. However, what and why the customers are buying UC based solutions is most interesting. 

Benefits of UC -- The ICON sales team report that often the reason a customer invests in UC based solution Wave IP is because it delivers the ability to track and manage customer communications, links with back office applications and provides the ability to link mobile users with the business applications. 

UC Applications -- The leading vendors have provided the core UC applications as standard to all desk handsets by for several years now. Vendors such as vertical Communications are now providing these applications to the mobile extension be that a cell phone or a business dedicated Wi-Fi handset. Solutions such as Viewpoint mobile delivers all the enterprise UC applications, including call recording, to the mobile handset giving the road warrior the same communications resource as their desk based colleagues. 

Mobile Distribution

Typical applications we provide are the UC application for integrating the mobile with the business telephone and real time messaging solutions which integrate with mobiles.

In this respect we believe that 2015 will see a growth in demand for mobile UC applications as businesses integrate their mobiles into the enterprise telephone system. Several vendors are already providing these applications notable amongst them is Vertical Communications which provides its Viewpoint Mobile UC application for businesses. UC applications such as Viewpoint deliver all the enterprise UC applications to the mobile handset giving the "road warrior" the same communications resource as their office based colleagues. 

We also expect a continued growth in real time messaging applications to mobiles. These M2M like solutions are increasingly being deployed in the hospitality sector to monitor BMS, PMS solutions such as 

1. heating/air conditioning monitoring, 
2. fire/intrusion/door/elevator stop alarms, 
3. integration with hotel applications 
4. emergency buttons, 
5. information broadcast, 
6. tech-alarms, room & mini bar status