Whats up with VoIP?

Something has been bugging me lately. I can't understand why technology sales organizations continue to try and sell a product instead of a solution. In the past, it was all about why our "features and benefits" were better than the competition. Today, the market has changed and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is driving the market. This is a whole new breed of phone system vendor. With so many products available for customers, it's safe to say, 8 out of 10 products chosen will provide the appropriate features and benefits.


So what next? How about looking at the whole technology plan and where this piece fits in. Even with the whole industry heading down the path, the data vendors chose from the beginning of open standards and cross compatibility of software and hardware products. The phone system vendors still try and sell by putting out negative information about the competition. I don't think the negative information is helpful to anyone, especially the customer. It is a waste of time and energy. Recently, many of the major phone system vendors have been feasting on the demise of Nortel. They have been creating promotions to go after the suffering giant. I get it! I'm sure lots of systems will be sold and lots of people will get rich on this sort of promotion. I just won't embrace it or sell to my customers by focusing on the weaknesses of my competition. I would rather have someone purchase from me because they trust me and believe I understand their business needs and I have a solution which fits.


The interesting part is the numbers are starting to show the customers agree. The "other" category of phone system vendors, which is largely made up of open standards based systems, is slowly eroding the market share of the big boys like Avaya and NEC. The reason for this, is manufacturers like Fonality and Switchvox are building open standards based systems, which allow you to have a migration path which is flexible. You can choose to have a phone system that is hosted and owned by a third party provider today and tomorrow you can take the same phones and use them on a phone system which runs on an HP or Dell server. This phone system on the server will use the same switching equipment and routers that the hosted solutions use.

Who would ever think it is okay to make a full PC replacement mandatory with a server replacement today? Who would find it acceptable to force customers with an HP server to use only HP laptops and PC's? The answer is, no one. It does not make sense. If you talk with a traditional phone system sales representative today, they are going to try to sell you a phone system with phones which "work best" only on their system. They are going to say their system is "open" but in reality it only works best with their phones.


The great news is, customers' dollars are what rule the ultimate outcome. Customer's prefer having flexible upgrade options and mulitple migration paths when choosing their phone systems. I'm not saying some products are not better than others. I'm not even saying buying a proprietary system is not right for some companies, without a doubt it is. The only way to make sense of it is when you take time to evaluate the risk verses reward of purchasing an open system versus a proprietary system. What direction is the vendor going with their product? What examples and cost comparisons can they provide to show what it costs to open up their system? What are the risks of purchasing a more open system in terms of support and future product releases? Depending on how you end up feeling about the answers to these questions you may or may not be on the right track.


Thanks for reading my blog.