The Software “Hard Sell” is Alive at VoiceCon

After attending VoiceCon in Orlando this week one thing is more apparent than ever – telephony software is winning the battle of mindshare over hardware alternatives. While this has been true for a while, what is new is that current economic conditions are further fueling the case for software in terms of practicality at the knowledge worker desktop, more stringent return on investment analyses and distribution channel economics. One old idea and another brand new one make this case.

During a keynote speech, Gurdeep Singh Pall, Microsoft’s Corporate VP of Unified Communications, made a strong case for businesses to drop their desktop office phones in favor of a PC-based softphone. While this battle has been going on for a decade or more, today’s business environment is beginning to support this argument in ways we did not envision ten years ago. The current global recession is making the emphasis on capital expenditure reductions an absolute necessity. Spending $300 or $400 on a desktop phone to work behind a PBX is no longer practical in many cases, especially when one considers the improved technology in softphones over the past decade and the small amount of time many workers spend at their desk. While many old-time telecom people have balked at this inevitable transition for years, the fact that most office workers today have a mobile/smartphone attached to their belt or in their pocket negates the argument that office workers need or require the desk phone form factor to do their work.

The second interesting VoiceCon event was the announcement that Siemens intended to port its unified communications OpenScape platform to virtual servers within Amazon.com’s data centers to provide UC services from the “cloud.”  This means that potential SMB customers will be able to sign up for any or all offered Siemens UC services, initiate trials and manage their telecom systems via a browser from the Amazon.com website. The resulting service would be less complex to provision than if the customer bought the software themselves and less expensive because there would be no upfront hardware and software expenses for the customer to absorb. The Siemens’ sales channel partners also see great potential for sales process simplification. The fact that Amazon.com currently seems to have a great deal of underutilized capacity across the company’s seven global data centers will make this a win-win situation for all involved. At this point Siemens refers to this arrangement as a “proof of concept”, however turning it into an available offering may only be three to six months away.

Times are certainly changing and the speed of change seems to be increasing. Necessity is truly the mother of invention. Sit down and hold on. The future is coming fast.