The on-premise market has plunged headlong into a terminal tailspin while the dash towards cloud territory has become an all-out land grab, according to BroadSoft's VP of Market Offers Mike Wilkinson, who says it's clearly inevitable that traditional business models have to change with the times.
The way things are going, the modus operandi of traditionalists is doomed, believes Wilkinson, their future being a chaotic stumble into a diminishing market. "The comms sector will continue to see rising levels of cloud adoption, increased capabilities around mobile and more applications in the office environment," commented Wilkinson. "With more intelligence in the system and more interaction with cloud services this will lead to greater productivity in businesses. BroadSoft is responding to these demands by focusing on cloud solutions that are far more integrated and based on intelligence. This change is inevitable and if resellers don't address it they will struggle as they compete for an ever smaller market."
That said, the destination of these trends is far more clear-cut than the means of keeping pace with changes in the market. "The challenge is how to manage the change from a capex to a cloud UC opex sale," added Wilkinson. "Upfront commission models distort the marketplace so resellers will tend to focus on those products that provide the highest financial return within a short time period. This breeds a pattern of behaviour focused on the short-term. Cloud, with its annuity based revenue model, is almost the polar opposite."
At the root of such a business model transformation lies strategic responsibility, the path down which all resellers should tread, believes Wilkinson. "UK SMEs are turning to the cloud more and more for business applications including UC," he commented. "A number of our customers more than doubled their installed base of cloud UC services last year and they anticipate more strong growth in 2015. For SMEs, cloud offers obvious benefits in terms of flexibility, reduced capex and service updates without disruption. However, we're seeing this trend extend to larger businesses where legacy infrastructure is gradually coming offline, and they are looking for faster, more scalable solutions."
Wilkinson's argument is fair and his market vision seems definitive - perhaps the final answer. "UC solutions delivered over the cloud are starting to dominate the market," he commented. "Users are highly receptive to the benefits of cloud over on-premise. As cloud UC is becoming a mainstream solution for small and medium enterprises as well as mid to large enterprises, we are doing far more application integration and partnerships with cloud business application vendors in order to accelerate the adoption of that cloud UC opportunity.
"We have to make sure what we're developing is intuitive and focused on the right business use cases in order to create tangible returns. This means gaining an in-depth understanding of end users' requirements and business processes. As a marketer I have a real issue with using clichés like lower TCO in a throw-away manner. It is far better to focus on case studies and known benefits from a deployment. The industry as a whole needs to continue to change its approach to selling technology. There has to be a shift towards a much broader view of end user customer use cases that appeals to what the customer is really trying to achieve. The more the industry talks in technology or product terminology, the slower the adoption of those solutions."
Early days
Wilkinson's aspirations in the IP world go back a long way. He came into IT from the aerospace industry in 1990 when he joined south Wales-based Newbridge Networks. "It was one of the best opportunities in the area and Newbridge was growing incredibly fast," commented Wilkinson. "I started as an engineer but quickly transferred to new product introduction and product management. I was given the task of introducing a new range of IP router products, so have been in the IP market for almost 25 years."
Wilkinson has always worked on the product and solution management areas of communications, and BroadSoft gave him the opportunity to take the experience he'd gained working with customers in the field and translate that into developing new solutions. "I am particularly excited by the integration possibilities of cloud, analytics, mobile and business applications," he added. "Aside from a focus on the ability to integrate with applications within the business, I'm also focused on mobility integration, improving the management of our cloud UC solutions, especially for highly distributed enterprise markets, while also adding an improved customer experience and vertical integration."
Simplifying the customer journey deserves more consideration, believes Wilkinson, especially given the increasing amount of device diversity in the market, from hard phones, smartphones, tablets, laptops and ultimately wearables. "The journey should not just be focused on features but more on the use cases around those features, and knowing exactly what features people use to collaborate effectively," he commented. "Ultimately, it comes back to understanding what will make a business more productive in the environment in which it operates."
Since its acquisition of HIPCOM in August 2013 BroadSoft has steadily increased the density of UC features available on the BroadCloud platform. Wilkinson is particularly upbeat about the My Room feature in UC-One which delivers a dynamic collaboration capability. "We see the future workplace becoming more like a series of war rooms during the business day where small groups come together and collaborate on a project to achieve rapid results," he said. "My Room is intuitive to use and collaboration sessions can be started quickly to initiate interaction with colleagues inside and partners outside the business."
BroadSoft is also focused on expanding throughout Europe, especially with its BroadCloud managed service offering. The company is working closely with service providers who package the BroadCloud managed service as part of their customer offering. For example, one new service provider customer works with 10-15 resellers, and BroadSoft is helping the company sell UC into various verticals including hospitality, retail, professional services, non-profit and education.
"We are carefully managing our rate of growth while also being sure to simplify the user experience for our customers," added Wilkinson. "We also need to remain focused on improving install times, making the journey from signing up to UC to actually using it on the desktop as short and simple as possible. We believe technologies like WebRTC will make a big impact here. As more agreements with browsers are put in place the barriers to adoption are coming down and IT professionals are expressing renewed interest in what is truly a game changing technology."
BroadSoft has undergone a significant expansion in recent years. It's bigger in Europe now than it was globally when Wilkinson joined in 2006. "In the UK there has been growth in UC and SIP trunking," he noted. "BT's new Cloud Voice service using BroadCloud validates how mainstream hosted UC is now becoming, and BroadSoft's focus is to ensure that it becomes a de facto solution for most businesses. BroadSoft has also expanded its offering both organically and through acquisition, always addressing the application integration needs of our customers, with the acquisitions of Systems Design & Development (SDD), HIPCOM and Finocom in Germany. We'll see more customer wins as a result and add more capability into both the BroadCloud and BroadWorks offerings."
Wilkinson has helped many service providers based all over the world to launch and grow their UC services, introducing services as far north as Greenland and as far south as Argentina. This experience has given BroadSoft a truly global view of the development of cloud UC services. "The traditional PBX refresh cycle is approximately eight years in Europe," commented Wilkinson. "But this is all set to change. For example, those businesses that take a mobile-first approach for UC are discovering that the traditional PBX comes with many limitations.
"The future workplace will also see other changes in communication tendencies. These will not only come as a result of the millennial generation entering the workforce, but the UK's older retirement age means businesses will also need to accommodate the communication demands of generation X. UC will come into its own here as a way to offer adaptable and tailored communication options."•