NXTComm08: Bare Knuckles Over UC SMB

The last panel at Fierce’s Unified
Communication Conference at NXTComm08 in Las Vegas turned into one of the more heated, as a carrier,
a software company, a hosted provider, and a hardware manufacturer alternately
squared off and agreed with each other when it came to discussing UC in the SMB
space.

Allworx President George Daddis and Cypress Communications
President/CEO Stephen Schilling got into a rolling discussion about the
economics of an appliance solution verses a hosted one. Each claimed to have a
ROI white paper demonstrating that their respective solutions would have a
better return on investment and each seemed to have a different view of what
their respective customers wanted. Daddis indicated a good channel partner/VAR
relationship was the key to a headache free solution while Schilling had a
number of business and financial customers who were more than happy to have a
hosted solution.

Digium’s Bill Miller was happy to take both sides on the
appliances v. hosted debate, pointing out Asterisk software and Digium products
were used in both hosted solutions and appliances, including the SMB SwitchVox
solution, but also threw in a dig that “he hadn’t come across Allworx too
much” in the marketplace.

Dropping Cisco into the discussion brought up more nuanced
commentary from the panel. Cbeyond VP of Marketing Rob Consolazio and Schilling
were both careful to point out they both had Cisco-powered networks while
either Miller or Daddis said Cisco had not demonstrated much traction into the
SMB space in spite of and/or due to its acquisition of Linksys.

None of the panelists felt immediately threatened by
Microsoft’s entry into the SMB and several ridiculed using Costco.com as a
sales channel for Microsoft’s Response Point IP PBX solution.  Miller noted Microsoft had a history of requiring multiple iterations of software to get to a winning solution.

Related articles:
Buy your IP
PBX at Costco
Fonality, Allworx
top SMB IP PBX appliance reviews
NXTcomm08: Microsoft
Announces Hosted UC solution; Nortel delivers first