Digital Common Sense

My friend and colleague Matt Lamber over at Conversationware posted this yesterday in response to my post A Brief Look at 2007 - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. It’s a worthwhile read, and I ose Matt a note of thanks. Unknowingly, it was an email exchange we shared that led me down that line of thinking.

I thought it was worth revisiting this, especially after reading my friends at FierceVoip claiming VoIP crusader recants.  (And a small ego note, it’s Ken Camp, not Champ).

VOIP is just plumbing

More and more it has seemed to me that VOIP doesn’t matter. I don’t see this discussed on mainstream communications news sites, presumably it’s a question of who pays their bills through advertising.

First, I don’t think I’ve recanted much, but I will explain. Second, the plumbing analogy is certainly getting a bit long in the tooth, but this seems a good time to elaborate.

The post on FierceVoIP says

Don’t know if I would call all those edge controllers, QoS monitoring, security systems and media gateways mere plumbing, but I do agree that selling voice as a service rather than a technology is where the market is heading.

‘m not sure I’d either agree or disagree, but what I will say is that infrastructure, whether it’s SBCs and gateways or VoIP in general, isn’t what customers want. I think the FieceVoIP piece actually supports the point I’m making.

VoIP is not disruptive. It’s over ten years old. It isn’t innovative today. VoIP is a tried and true technology. It’s tested and proven. It’s been carrying massive volumes of voice calls for a long time now. It’s almost what I’d call a legacy technology at this point.

The failing of the unified communications industry segment has been that solution providers aren’t selling comprehensive integrated solutions yet. They’re still selling technology widgets. VoIP is a technology widget that is simply part of the established infrastructure. It’s not new. It’s not sexy. It’s not disruptive.

Customers don’t want to buy VoIP any more than they want to buy frame relay. Customers want solutions to business problems. Selling VoIP is still leaving it up to the customer to solve their own problem by peace-mealing together their own suite of solutions.

In 2008, I expect to see more VoIP companies that can’t move off of selling technolgy into designing and selling integrated business solutions fail in the market. That’s right, fail. And they should fail.

Plumbing parts are a commmodity. You can go to Home Depot and buy everything you need to pipe a house. Great for the do-it-yourselfer indeed. But most enterprise businesses, especially in the SMB space, aren’t looking to become DIY voice providers. They’re in a core business and they’re looking for solutions to their business problems.

So a word to the solution providers out there. Think long and hard about how you really integrate technologies to provide comprehensive solutions. Whether you call it Software Oriented Architecture (SOA) or Software as a Service (SaaS), the focus for the year ahead has to be on business solutions for business problems.

Integrating services, voice - video - data, with business applications like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supply Chain Management and Human Resources Management are going to be the really hot focal points in 2008. That’s where the real need is. And to succeed - to thrive - solution providers can’t offer widgets and plumbing and still win business.

Technorati Tags: VoIP as Plumbing, VoIP, unified communicatoins, SOA, SaaS, convergence, integration

Filed by Ken at 6:49 pm under Unified Communications, VoIP/Unified Communications