MARKET REVIEW
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Virtual force for change
The needs of the customer are changing the channel’s relationships with them, and according to industry experts, virtualisation has generated and enabled this change.
proved to be a perfect storm for the virtualised world. The collapse of the banking sector ushered in a period where corporate budgets had their capex slashed, while demands for cost and efficiency savings grew. “Internal IT and comms departments that might have previously shuddered at the thought of not owning and managing their own boxes, suddenly found that it was the only way to benefit from efficiencies offered by new technology without spending huge amounts of capex,” said Adrian Sunderland, CTO, Griffin Internet. “Griffin has seen an increase in demand for more reliable, resilient and higher bandwidth connectivity to support virtualised and hosted applications.”
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Sunderland is ‘totally convinced’ that virtualisation is a huge opportunity for resellers. “Hosted telephony and Software as a Service are rapidly becoming mainstream,” he said. “Resellers should leverage their existing skills, whether in telephony or applications, partner with a decent virtualised hosting company and launch services rapidly.”
A point of interest, noted Sunderland, is that the take-up of fully unified comms solutions had been unimpressive until recently. “I have seen organisations spend a year or more trying to integrate unified communications in-house. The hosted guys have built unified communications
he hype surrounding ‘virtualised everything’ was at its peak two to three years ago, but 2009
on a service provider scale, typically with web-based provisioning and management front ends. This has led to more and more organisations adopting unified communications and deploying in weeks rather than months or years.”
Mitel is an innovator in the virtualisation space. In partnership with VMWare the vendor claimed an industry first when it virtualised voice in real-time. According to Alison Brewer, Solutions Marketing Manager at Mitel, this development generated great interest in the market because voice could now be virtualised on a data network, resulting in more benefits for a business. “Virtualisation enables businesses of all sizes to build internal clouds that transform IT and voice into a dynamic, flexible service that delivers efficiency, control and choice within their infrastructures, while offering the potential to dramatically lower capital and operating costs,” said Brewer.
Mitel also partners with Sun Microsystems to offer a desktop virtualisation proposition. Brewer added: “As with any new technology it takes time to convince channels of the market opportunity, and time to convince the end user about the benefits virtualisation will deliver. However, the Mitel and VMware story is well and truly out there and generating a lot of interest.”
Customers are now realising the benefits of virtualisation and want to take the complexity out of their ICT operation. The Mitel Unified
“Virtualisation is another course on the a la carte menu of communications.”
IP Client enables companies to significantly reduce their hardware and energy costs by consuming up to 90 per cent less energy than the average computer/phone combination. Virtualisation also frees up employees by providing greater mobility and flexibility, while freeing up the IT team from maintenance. If there is a problem with an employee’s computer or phone, they can simply insert a new card to get them up and running immediately.
Brewer added: “Virtualisation is another course on the a la Carte menu of communications, providing customers with alternative ways of deploying tools and applications to address their communication requirements. However, virtualisation is not the only way to achieve benefits such as cost savings, increasing productivity, simplifying the network and business processes. These benefits, and more, can be achieved through the use of other unified communication tools. For example, virtualisation can provide cost reduction, improvement in productivity and augmentation of a business continuity strategy – but so can teleworking. It is imperative that channels listen to their customers and provide a solution that solves specific customer challenges, and not recommend
Alison Brewer
a technology because it is the latest and greatest.”
Actimax is blazing a virtualistion trail for the reseller community. John Massey, Managing Director, said: “We have embraced virtualisation as an opportunity. We are in the process of implementing a complete strategy which includes virtualised voice and data services for our end users. The changes in the market are both an opportunity and a threat. Only resellers who adopt new strategies will be able to take the opportunities.”
Massey has seen a change in customer requirements during the last six months, and says that the determining factor driving change will be the availability of high speed bandwidth at lower cost to end user premises. “We believe that virtualisation is one way to achieve greater productivity and flexibility. However, many of our customers are looking for a managed service approach where we help them run their business in addition to virtualisation. We have noticed an increase demand in FMC and SIP requirements. This is a change of solution rather than a loss of business. Resellers who do not accept and adopt a change of strategy with their customers will lose out in the
changing market conditions.” n
Case study – page 42
40 COMMS DEALER APRIL 2010
www.comms-dealer.com
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