Steve Osler, CEO of cloud PBX innovator Wildix, pulled no punches when he claimed that traditional PBX vendors are 'the Walking Dead, sucking fresh blood from the channel', and described carriers as 'dinosaurs who are not UC specialists and don’t make any profit'.
“Operators keep copying each other, launching ‘me too’ products with no advantages to customers," he claimed. "They are Dodos and it is only a matter of time before they go out of business."
Addressing 400 Wildix partners from across Europe at the company’s inaugural UC&C Summit staged at the World Trade Centre in Barcelona, Osler said the Internet and ‘Amazon Effect’ has also led to the almost total loss of ‘the man in middle’ between supply and demand.
“It is no longer sustainable to be a pure reseller of other people's products who acts as a simple intermediary and fights a price war that does not bring margins," he said.
Osler called upon resellers to wake up to the new world of managed service provision and start selling disruptive cloud-based PBX solutions on a subscription model, or risk extinction.
“Resellers will not exist anymore," he added. "Your future begins today. Evolving into a Managed Service Provider is the only way to remain competitive.
“This is a savage war with everyone fighting for profits. If you don’t differentiate and adapt your business model now you will continue to lose margin. You cannot survive selling commodities.
"No one, nowadays, addresses a systems integrator (reseller) company because he wants a new switchboard. What is required are tools to increase business productivity.”
Osler urged resellers to transform from being a simple retailer and installer into a professional MSP, specialised in solving the business challenges of the customer.
"System integrators must evolve into MSPs and sell their skills as an integral part of the solution," he added. "This is done by proposing the right technologies but together with a business model suitable for the purpose.”
Wildix is pledging to give channel companies the leads and training they need to transition to MSPs and address market opportunities in the 50-1,000 seat market.
Cristiano Bellumat, Head of Channel Sales Strategy and founder of Wildix's training division Unicomm, said: “Creating value is a pillar of the sales model for companies in the Managed Services sector. In fact, it is not about selling a product, it is about interviewing the client to understand what problems they have to solve to improve their performance.”
Osler said Wildix was creating an ‘amazing amount’ of qualified leads via social media and marketing campaigns which are all being delivered to partners and are made public via the company’s Facebook page.
To reinforce his message Osler invited 10 partners from Italy, France and Germany to describe how their businesses had been transformed by adopting the MSP model following Unicomm training and all reported a rise in profits.
Wildix co-founder CTO Dimitri Osler, alongside Vasiliy Ganchev, Team Leader of VoIP development, announced a raft of new Wildix hardware and innovations.
These included Wizyconf, the first professional and easy-to-use hacker-proof web conference based on the WebRTC and the Chrome OS operating system; a complete suite of IoS and Android mobile integration solutions and apps; a new DECT phone that can be sanitised for use in medical environments; and a new Super Vision 8inch display phone console for managers.
Speaking after the conference a UK reseller, who asked to remain anonymous due to a current vendor relationship, told Comms Dealer: “The Wildix products work out of the box and set-up is simple. I have already sent two of my guys for training. This is the future.”
For more insights into Wildix’s UK strategy see the March issue of Comms Dealer.
Pictured above: Dimitri Osler (left) with brother Steve.