What is happening in Telecommunications? – the view from Burton on Trent

Posted by Chris on March 24th, 2012

From where I sit near Burton-on-Trent nothing much has changed in ICT and Telecommunications solutions for 10 Years or so. Rubbish you might say – loads of things have changed. Part of my problem is that Voyager Networks – the company that I sold in 2000 – was way ahead of it’s time. We were a Voice over IP provider when it really was a new thing ( In fact I remember Cisco buying Celsius – whose equipment we were already using – to build some of the first VoIP systems ). We were a Managed Network Services Provider when it was a nightmare to be one ( by this I mean that there were all sorts of ” New Telco’s ” claiming to be ” better than BT ” when in fact they were much much worse. ( The problem was that we had to try them before we could find this out ). We had a ” Network Operations Centre ” ( NOC ) when this was a really cool thing to have – it even had a ” Bridge ” – and it also had some super cool software ( InfoVista ) to ” pro-actively manage our customer’s networks “.

We were only able to build and run these Managed Networks because we had some really great technical people who overcame all the technical issues that arose from being a leading edge Data Networking and Telecommunications Solutions Provider.

In fact the world has got a lot simpler in the last 10-15 years – nobody really disputes the fact that VoIP is the way to go. All the main ” telephone systems ” companies are now VoIP Solutions providers ( well actually they are Unified Communications providers having been Converged Solutions providers along the way ). Most of those Telcos are now dead and gone. ” Consolidation ” has happened big time in the Telecommunications Provider market. Network and device management software has got better and cheaper.

A look from Burton on Trent at my old companies website http://www.voyager.net.uk/partners/ serves to emphasize what I am saying – hardly anything has changed ! All of these products and services/solutions  http://www.voyager.net.uk/solutions/ were there years ago. The only hint of a change is in ” Mobility “.

A look at 365iT’s website is the same http://www.365itservices.co.uk/ ( 365iT bought 5i Limited a few years ago ). Can we find ANYTHING different ?? The only thing that stands out for me is ” Virtualization “. Server virtualization is a pretty hot area with VMware being a hot stock  http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomtaulli/2012/03/23/3-stock-picks-from-tech-ceos/ .

With nothing having changed I think one thing is certain – competition is fierce !! Which means price erosion.

If we look at Node4’s website http://www.node4.co.uk/ ( Node4 are Headquartered in Derby ) there is an indication of one of the main changes that have happened – Cloud computing. Words like ” Hosting ” and ” Co-location ” are prevalent on the Node4 website. Virtualization is also there.

In this article http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/vmware-cto-virtualization-is-swiss-army-knife-of-it/72151 Virtualization, Cloud Computing and BYOD ( Bring your own Device ) are the areas mentioned as being important by corporate, Revlon.

I think the real clue as where ICT and Telecommunications is going is in the phrase ” Any information, anywhere, on any device, at any time ” and the challenges that this brings both to the user ( who will have multiple communications streams coming through to whatever device they are using – more of which soon )   and also in the types of information and data that the user is accessing.

The drive to achieve this level of communication is what will drive and shape the infrastructure and Telecommunications solutions requirements.

Many companies are in denial over the use of social media ( and I am greatly amused by this as it seems to me that company management have not read or remembered their – recent – history. In our memory people have refused to accept that the personal computer would become ubiquitous, the mobile phone, emailing, texting etc etc and of course they have grown to be huge industries. Perhaps when Facebook IPO’s for $75-100 Million in the next month or so some management will start to take it and other Social Networks seriously ).

Personally I think that people will use social ( and social business ) applications alongside corporate applications and so for example the stream of communications to their smartphone, iPad and Laptop will include the ” Unified Communications bit ” ( voice calls, text and email ) and the ” Social Media bit ” and this will require the integration and control of all of those streams. Of course this is already happening for many people and it happened with the smartphone first – as looking at my Blackberry demonstrates – Messages, Text/SMS, Calendar, Phone, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+ etc etc.

As Revlon chief information officer David Giambruno says this demand for information drives certain infrastructure elements -e.g.  virtualized server farms, security to protect those servers, storage farms for the all the data – including back-up data, smartphone and iPad compatible applications N.B. The rise of companies like http://www.apperian.com/ who specialize in ” Mobile Application Management “.

Telecommunications solutions will be driven by the need to fulfill our desire for ” Anything, Everywhere ” communications.

Chris Windley, Burton on Trent.

Speakers at UCExpo 2011 – Hosted Voice needs to be Simples !

Posted by Chris on March 4th, 2011

Clare Jenkins, M.D. of FutureLine, is going to be one of the speakers at UCExpo 2011 and will have a simples message to deliver.

For Hosted Voice to become widely used it needs to be simples !

It also helps when it is supported by one of the biggest networking companies in the world – and Cisco Systems fits the bill perfectly.

At UCExpo 2011 the Cisco FutureLine stand ( 504 ) will show and demonstrate the latest in Cisco S.M.B. telephony options.

Actually there are two audiences for Cisco FutureLine – the end user and the reseller. Clearly the reseller knows all the technical jargon but the end user does not – especially the S.M.B. end user.

The message needs to be simples to both but between Cisco FutureLine and resellers it may be ok to use the jargon.

It’s about communicating in the right way – taking into account who your audience is.

S.M.B. customers don’t know all the answers to questions like ” What features do you need ? ” – they are typically growing, dynamic businesses who are changing structure and direction quite often.

What they do need therefore is FLEXIBILITY and UPGRADABILITY.

They want to know that they can get a phone system that does the job right now but can grow to suit the needs of thier business in the future.

SIMPLES !!

Why is the combination of Digium Asterisk and Cisco Systems so powerful?

Posted by Chris on February 19th, 2011

The Cisco FutureLine Hosted Voice system is based on Digium Asterisk at the core and uses Cisco Systems networking and endpoint ( voip phones, video over ip equipment etc etc ) hardware.

Whilst some people might view Cisco and Digium as unlikely partners I believe that they represent one of the most powerful combinations in the telephony world.

I regard Digium and Asterisk respectively as a company and a solution whose time has come. I am not alone in this view. If you doubt my opinion then perhaps you may consider the involvement of David Skok of Matrix Partners

http://www.matrixpartners.com/site/team_detail/david_skok/

in Digium. He is one of the investors.

David is specifically focused on the areas of cloud computing, Open Source, Software as a Service (SaaS), marketing automation, virtualization, storage, and data center automation.

Consider also the references in the book ” Asterisk: the future of telephony ” :

” In the book ” Paradigm Shift ” Tim O’Reilly talks about a paradigm shift that is occurring in the way technology ( both hardware and software ) is delivered. O’Reilly identifies three trends:

– the commoditisation of software

– network enabled collaboration

– software customisability ( software as a service – SaaS )

These three concepts provide evidence to suggest that open source technology is an idea whose time has come. ”

In this blog here

http://mandarainmaker.co.uk/wordpress/2011/02/19/digium-asterisk-based-futureline-at-uc-expo-2011/

I have highlighted a number of general benefits of  a Digium Asterisk based Hosted Voice platform. ( These benefits also apply to premises based or managed solutions ).

In the same way that a Digium Asterisk based pbx like the Switchvox can be compared favourably to other premises based alternatives e.g. Avaya/Nortel or Panasonic a Digium Asterisk based Hosted Voice solution can be compared favourably to other proprietary Hosted Voice solutions e.g. Broadsoft or Mitel.

Without going through all the general benefits highlighted in my earlier blog it is reasonable to assume that the advantages are scaled up in line with the scaling of the system from one that serves a single customer to one that serves multiple customers.

If you are a reseller, distributer or small telco or cloud services company looking to provide Hosted Voice services to your customers ( and perhaps the customers of your customers ) then you are going to be looking at an investment in the order of £100’s of thousands ( albeit financed over a period of time ) in order to acquire a proprietary Hosted solution from e.g. Broadsoft or Mitel.

I highlight proprietary solution because it seems to me that the very last thing you want to do is to spend £100’s of thousands on a solution that is not “open”, standards based, easily upgradeable, customisable and flexible.

For an in depth appreciation of the problem being faced we can turn to David Skok again and a series of posts such as

http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/saas-economics-1/

David starts:

” This post provides SaaS entrepreneurs with an Excel spreadsheet model and graphs that show the cash flow trough that happens to SaaS, or other subscription/recurring revenue businesses that use a sales organization. These kinds of SaaS businesses face a cash flow problem in the early days, because they have to invest up front in sales and marketing expenses to acquire customers, and only get payments from those customers over a delayed period of time. I refer to this phenomenon as the the SaaS Cash Flow Trough. ”

The cash flow problem in the early days is only going to be worse if you have to spend £100’s of thousands on your Hosted Voice platform !!

So, for many reasons, even though there have been successful models around the world based on proprietary Hosted Voice systems – I think there are a lot of failures in the Hosted Voice world based on such platforms – I believe that an investment in a Digium Asterisk based platform is going to help a Hosted Voice business model massively ( because it is going to be far less up front cost, more scalable, upgradeable etc etc ).

Evidently, if you are going to be supplying a total voice solution to a customer, you are going to need things like networking hardware ( routers, firewalls etc ), end points ( phones, video cameras etc ), possibly storage solutions, virtualisation hardware and software, broadband, SIP trunks etc etc

Who better to partner with than Cisco ??

As I have mentioned before there are millions of Cisco endpoints and routers attached to Digium Asterisk systems – particularly systems that have been supplied to small and medium sized businesses.

A quick review of  established and experienced Digium Asterisk value added resellers proves that they typically have Cisco and Microsoft skills and accreditations aswell as Digium Asterisk. They have to have really – don’t they !

Clearly Cisco have products and services that compete with Digium Asterisk products and services.

However Cisco also partner with e.g. Broadsoft and it could easily be argued that Broadsoft based solutions are preventing sales of e.g. Cisco UC 500 systems.

In the S.M.B. space particularly ( and here I mean S.M.B. end user customers and S.M.B. resellers, distributers and telco’s ) I believe the combination of Cisco and Asterisk is unbeatable and this is the combination that FutureLine provides.

FutureLine Hosted Voip at UC Expo 2011 with Cisco

Posted by Chris on February 18th, 2011

FutureLine Hosted Voip will be at UC Expo 2011, Olympia, London from the 8 – 9th March on the Cisco Systems stand.

UC Expo is one of the premier U.K. events for CIOs, Business Managers, Technical Directors and associated professionals from organisations of every kind interested in Unified Communications.

As one of the leaders in Unified Communications Cisco Systems has made a major committment to UC Expo and FutureLine will be there for S.M.B.’s and other organisations interested in Hosted Voice and Unified Communications.

Andy Brocklehurst of Cisco will be one of the Cisco speakers and is quoted as saying:

“We are seeing an increasing demand for managed and hosted solutions in the voice space and this is especially the case for smaller businesses with less than 20 employees. FutureLine have a refreshingly new approach by addressing the key fundamentals of quality, security and ease of use and deployment. This is all underpinned by partnering with Cisco who fully understand how to manage different media provided by the various consumption models.”

Andy Brocklehurst
RSM Cisco Small Business

Clare Jenkins, M.D. of FutureLine, will be speaking at the event aswell. Further posts will give more details of Clare and Andy’s themes and also we will be posting about some exciting offers that FutureLine will be making to people interested in evaluating FutureLine’s Hosted Voice solutions.

For more information about FutureLine please go to:

http://www.futureline.net.uk/

or call Clare on

0871 594 3555 or

email her at: info@futureline.net.uk

New Cisco based Hosted Telephony system for Liverpool U.K.

Posted by Chris on January 21st, 2011

A new Cisco based Hosted Telephony service is available, via selected Cisco partners, in Liverpool, U.K.
Cisco Hosted Telephony ( otherwise known as Hosted Voip, Voice, Phones or  Hosted Unified Communications is particularly suitable for small and medium sized businesses and those with many small offices ( or small numbers of telephony users in each office ).

A representative from Cisco Systems comments:

“We are seeing an increasing demand for managed and hosted solutions in the voice space and this is especially the case for smaller businesses with less than 20 employees. FutureLine have a refreshingly new approach by addressing the key fundamentals of quality, security and ease of use and deployment. This is all underpinned by partnering with Cisco who fully understand how to manage different media provided by the various consumption models.”

Andy Brocklehurst
RSM Cisco Small Business UK

For more information please contact Clare at Futureline

http://www.futureline.net.uk/contact.html

for the chance to win an ipad go to

http://info.futureline.net.uk/win-an-ipad/

New Cisco based Hosted Telephony Service for Birmingham U.K.

Posted by Chris on January 21st, 2011

A new Cisco based Hosted Telephony service is available, via selected Cisco partners, in Birmingham, U.K.
Cisco Hosted Telephony ( otherwise known as Hosted Voip, Voice or  Hosted Unified Communications is particularly suitable for small and medium sized businesses and those with many small offices ( or small numbers of telephony users in each office ).

A representative from Cisco Systems comments:

“We are seeing an increasing demand for managed and hosted solutions in the voice space and this is especially the case for smaller businesses with less than 20 employees. FutureLine have a refreshingly new approach by addressing the key fundamentals of quality, security and ease of use and deployment. This is all underpinned by partnering with Cisco who fully understand how to manage different media provided by the various consumption models.”

Andy Brocklehurst
RSM Cisco Small Business UK

For more information please contact Clare at Futureline

http://www.futureline.net.uk/contact.html

for the chance to win an ipad go to

http://info.futureline.net.uk/win-an-ipad/

New Cisco based Hosted Telephony service for the City of London

Posted by Chris on January 19th, 2011

A new Cisco based Hosted Telephony service is available, via selected Cisco partners, in London City. Cisco Hosted Telephony ( otherwise known as Hosted Voip, Voice or  Hosted Unified Communications is particularly suitable for small and medium sized businesses and those with many small offices ( or small numbers of telephony users in each office ).

A representative from Cisco Systems comments:

“We are seeing an increasing demand for managed and hosted solutions in the voice space and this is especially the case for smaller businesses with less than 20 employees. FutureLine have a refreshingly new approach by addressing the key fundamentals of quality, security and ease of use and deployment. This is all underpinned by partnering with Cisco who fully understand how to manage different media provided by the various consumption models.”

Andy Brocklehurst
RSM Cisco Small Business UK

For more information please contact Clare at Futureline

http://www.futureline.net.uk/contact.html

Cisco hosted telephony for Northern Ireland

Posted by Chris on January 19th, 2011

A new Cisco based Hosted Telephony service is available, via selected Cisco partners, in Northern Ireland. Cisco Hosted Telephony ( otherwise known as Hosted Voip, Voice or  Hosted Unified Communications is particularly suitable for small and medium sized businesses and those with many small offices ( or small numbers of telephony users in each office ).

A representative from Cisco Systems comments:

“We are seeing an increasing demand for managed and hosted solutions in the voice space and this is especially the case for smaller businesses with less than 20 employees. FutureLine have a refreshingly new approach by addressing the key fundamentals of quality, security and ease of use and deployment. This is all underpinned by partnering with Cisco who fully understand how to manage different media provided by the various consumption models.”

Andy Brocklehurst
RSM Cisco Small Business UK

For more information please contact Clare at Futureline

http://www.futureline.net.uk/contact.html


Cisco Hosted Voice emerges from Dorset

Posted by Chris on January 13th, 2011

The Cisco FutureLine Hosted Voice solution has been developed by Dorset based Poundbury Systems. http://www.poundbury.com/

FutureLine ( http://www.futureline.net.uk/ ) appears to be a timely addition to the Cisco portfolio addressing quite neatly the lower end of the SMB market. A Cisco spokesperson said :

“We are seeing an increasing demand for managed and hosted solutions in the voice space and this is especially the case for smaller businesses with less than 20 employees. FutureLine have a refreshingly new approach by addressing the key fundamentals of quality, security and ease of use and deployment. This is all underpinned by partnering with Cisco who fully understand how to manage different media provided by the various consumption models.”

Andy Brocklehurst
RSM Cisco Small Busines

Supplied via existing and new Cisco resellers FutureLine enables them to provide customers with a low cost voice solution that grows and changes as the SMB grows and changes without there being any costly re-investments in voice infrastructure.

Previously Cisco small SMB prospects would have only been offered a UC500 based premises solution which was often too costly for the smaller customer.

Globally, solutions that combine Cisco end points with a Hosted Voice platform have been extremely popular.

Why choose a telephone system from Poundbury Systems?

We have range of options that not only suit your business, but can grow and change as your business does.

Flexible – Simple – Effective

The features you need, at a price you want.

All our Telephone Systems all contain the following features

Our standard telephone systems come with all the features below needed to successfully run any business. Apart from all these useful components, we can also customise your system to provide what you need for your individual business.

Free calls within your own company – All calls to your other offices or home workers equipped with our VoIP phone are entirely free of charge. Calls to other land lines and mobiles are cheaper than BT’s standard rates.

Lower call charges to everyone else – Our phone call charges are significantly lower than most national phone companies’ standard prices without compromising any quality.

Single Bill, Single Point of Contact – One bill and one phone call for all your calls, line rental, broadband and even your IT support.

Main number voice mail – Collected from the phone, remotely or by e-mail. Callers can leave a message out of hours or when your reception staff are busy, safe in the knowledge that their call will be returned swiftly.

Individual voice mails – Any employee you choose can have their own voice mail. Messages can then be forwarded to their e-mail account, mobile phone or can be accessed from their desk phone.

Individual call forwarding – Individual phones can be set to Do Not Disturb. Calls can be forwarded to other extensions, mobiles, home numbers etc.

Presence Indication – See when your colleagues are already on the phone – Have you ever transferred a call to somebody only to find that they are engaged? See with ease who is on the phone or available.

Fully customisable – You can turn on and off features, or add them at a later date.

Easy access to call reporting – Reports are available for you see exactly who has been calling where and for how long. These are issued automatically with each monthly bill.

Geography free – The system can receive numbers that are normally associated with different parts of the country – London for example.

Music on Hold – let your customers hear music while they are on hold.

Home workers – The system can support remote users so working from home becomes easier.

Road Warriors – The system can connect you with those members of staff who are always on the road.

Demonstrations

If you would like to see and try one of our phone systems, just call us and we will arrange for a free demonstration.

Additional Services
PSL can supply any other services you might need for your new telephone system, such as a broadband (ADSL) lines and routers. We can also provide servers, PC, e-mail and anti-spam service through to desktop PC support.

Common Additional Options:

Automatic greetings – Many professional companies are now or will soon be required by legislation to ensure industry specific announcements are made to each and every caller. Remove the worry for you and the hassle from your reception staff by recording the important messages and letting the system automatically play them for you.

Automatic call routing – Callers can choose 1 for sales 2 for accounts etc. This can save resources on reception and enable calls to be answered with more speed and efficiency.

Paging Service – Do you need to know about emergency calls out of hours? – No problem at all with our system.

Conference calls – Easily talk to any other group of people without the need to get in the car.

Personalised numbers – Individual users can have their own direct dial number – where only their phone will ring – ideal for you to give to your premium clients. These can be geographic i.e 01 or 02 numbers or non-geographic numbers such as 0800/0844/0871 etc

Multiple company numbers – The system can accept calls to multiple numbers and will display the number the caller has dialled – i.e. ‘Sales Order Line’.

Operator software – this can give specific users the ability to drag and drop incoming calls and see the status of all users within the organisation.

Company Specific Directories – these can be synchronised with ‘off phone lists’. Public folders in Microsoft Exchange can be linked to the phones for example.

Click to dial – allows you to select a number on your desktop and dial it by clicking with your mouse.
Screen pops – can show you information about who is calling and be linked to your other internal software, if the necessary external connectors are made available to us.

Time aware behaviour – The system can do different things automatically at different times of day. i.e. all calls to voicemail after 5.30pm.

Handsets
There are a choice of handsets and we can show you all the options at our demo facilities in Dorchester.

Driving Internet Leads for UK SMB using Hubspot Inbound Marketing Part 2

Posted by Chris on December 21st, 2010

following the blog post

http://mandarainmaker.co.uk/wordpress/2010/12/19/driving-internet-leads-for-uk-smb-using-hubspot-inbound-marketing/

We decided that we needed to create some ” Call to actions ” on the website and that these might include the completion of the sign-up form

Win an iPad

    Sign up before 1st January

    2011 to be in with the chance

    to win an Apple iPad

which was not completed as we were in a rush to get the new website up for the Cisco Small Business Workshop.
and also a ” white paper ” or ” Top 10 tips ” to be downloaded. These would need more thinking and work.
Shortly, following consideration of the target market and messages referred to earlier we would need to do some keyword/phrase analysis.
We  have already done some posting around the following phrases:
” Cisco Hosted Voip ” , ” Cisco Hosted Telephony “, ” Cisco Hosted UC ” , ” Cisco Hosted Unified Communications ” etc etc
Further analysis will reveal the best words/phrases to optimise around.

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