Not all end-users are ready or willing to bring Hosted/Cloud offerings into their environment. So why are you still offering that as the only solution?

By: Keaton Forrest, Partner Relationship Manager

Are you the Man with a Hammer?

There is a seemingly age-old debate in the Unified Communications space centering around which system deployment method is preferable. The options have typically come in the form of the Hosted PBX or the good old fashion On-Premises PBX, with the latter being the one most organizations are familiar with using. This is a topic that anyone familiar with the industry has had a discussion about at least a dozen or so times. I think we can all agree that the numbers are trending toward consumers procuring Hosted/Cloud offerings via subscription models. However, we are finding that does not necessarily mean that all end-users are ready or willing to bring this kind of network technology into their environment — whether it’s due to limitations of bandwidth, wanting total control over the PBX, or their own prejudices towards “that VoIP thing”.

Now more than ever we are seeing providers take “The Man with A Hammer” approach. Every opportunity looks like it belongs in the Cloud and thus they position their solution to the customer regardless of their restrictions and preferences. For this reason, we are seeing several of those same implementations go south which causes a slew of lingering issues, creating a maddening experience for all parties involved. This type of behavior should be unacceptable.

As I am sure many of you can attest, the install is 99.999% of the battle when implementing a new system, and because of this providers need to be more responsible with their site survey. Issues that could arise need to be diagnosed beforehand so providers can give their customers a heads up before they go live, or perhaps  even steer them towards another deployment method altogether.

Don’t forget: there are other ways to deliver UC to the end-user.

Unfortunately, with the trend going the way it is, most consumers are left to believe they would be down-right foolish and behind their competitors by not buying the latest and greatest VoIP system. After all, it’s all over your LinkedIn News Feed, just refresh your browser — it is as if we forgot there was another way to deliver UC to the end-user. Several articles and videos are recycled ad-nauseum by Over the Top providers offering suggestions and best-practices focused around only one deployment method … their deployment method … which is in the “Cloud”. While these are generally fun and insightful, they don’t give any clear guidance on how the customer can move forward with a decision, other than calling a sales rep.

It’s like McConaughey’s character in Dazed and Confused telling you “It’d be a lot cooler if you did.”

No single UC solution is alright, alright, alright for every customer.

But enough about the other guys, let us digress to what makes Teo different. We bring a unique ability to navigate this debate with not just two, but three answers. Vanilla, Chocolate, or Swirl. Heck, we can even throw in sprinkles. You can have it your way — call us Burger King, or whatever. We don’t care. We care more about pairing the right solution with the organization while still moving their operation to a newer wave of communications technology. To take it even a step further, we built this solution on the same software stack to give the end-user the same applications and capabilities regardless of where the system is sitting. Each delivery method offers advantages based on the organization’s technical environment and business preferences, so we find this philosophy yields no wrong answers. In that same vein, our licensing model allows the flexibility for the customer to move into a Hosted environment when they are ready — not when we tell them to.

This is not an attempt to say that Cloud/Hosted telephony is evil or bad. I am not a Luddite, or an Orwellian. Furthermore, I would be dead wrong to say that having a Premises-Based PBX is the superior technology strategy in the long run. It’s certainly not. Hosted/Cloud offers a wide variety of benefits such as predictable spend and strong redundancy and, thus, makes it a better mouse trap in theory. On-Premises is, however, still an option. And one that needs to be seriously considered when you are on-site with a customer and see they do not even have sufficient enough bandwidth to watch a two-minute YouTube video. Now you are expecting to push real-time traffic over that same network? Get out of my lab with that nonsense. Sure — you can make the argument that the customer should make a complete network overhaul. But that might not be what they are willing to commit to at the time. Your customers are asking you to create a Multi-Channel communication strategy because they know their competitors are doing the same thing. 

Dust off the tool-belt and take out the Phillips — become a Teo Partner today. There is more than one way to get this job done and at Teo, we’re proud to offer custom solutions.

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Partner Relationship Manager (West region) Keaton Forrest serves as a point of contact/relationship manager for Teo partners in order to drive and facilitate active partner growth through the appropriate alignment of resources. Connect with him on LinkedIn. He’s also a Seattle Mariners fan. Can’t blame him for that.