The autumn acquisition of UK-based UC distributor SIPHON Networks by pan-EMEA distribution firm Nuvias Group promised to extend SIPHON's influence in the UK and across the continent. We spoke to SIPHON Managing Director Steve Harris to find out how.
Harris's intention has always been to try and take the SIPHON product portfolio and value proposition into new geographical markets, and he had been looking at executing on this plan throughout 2016 after successfully expanding the business into the Benelux region. "The acquisition by Nuvias enables us to accelerate this and the group provides us access to over 20 potential countries across EMEA where we can look to replicate our success in the UK and Benelux regions," he said. "Nuvias shares the same philosophy, in terms of the focus on how we add value to our channel partners and provides significant scale, expertise and financial backing in enabling us to transfer this value into new areas."
Nuvias has adopted a 'practice' approach within its evolving organisation structure and is looking for these practices to be thought leaders and experts in the key technology focus areas for the Group. SIPHON will be the Unified Communications practice but its partners also have access to the other six practices being built within Nuvias. The Advanced Networking (former Zycko) and Cyber Security (former Wick Hill) practices are also in place and the SIPHON resellers and partners will now gain the opportunity to explore further new revenue opportunities from being part of this wider group.
"SIPHON has always had a strong focus on innovation and we have a dedicated team in place whose job is solely about researching and launching new technology areas," added Harris. "We are now also working on our own software development to provide operational support systems for our partners to simplify the deployment and management of cloud services. We have made significant investments in the automation of our internal systems and 70 per cent of our orders today are via our API or web store. We will look to continue this approach to enable us to scale effectively.
"Through a combination of growth in our existing markets and entering new regions we expect to double our revenues over the next three years. We will be fully integrated into Nuvias by this time but the ethos of the Unified Communications practice within Nuvias will be SIPHON and built on the DNA and success we have achieved to date."
Much of this success derives from SIPHON's role as a cloud technology enabler for partners, and a growing area is Microsoft's Skype for Business (SfB) which continues to gain traction from large enterprises and public sector organisations. This traction is now being replicated all the way down to the SME with the launch of the E5 SfB license pack on O365. "The availability of the E5 license and a PSTN calling plan from Microsoft in the UK has resulted in a new and significant peak of interest from end users which is now translating to a business opportunity for a new type of reseller looking to enter the UC market, and who have come from predominantly an IT background," noted Harris.
"These resellers are mostly proficient in delivering the collaboration and messaging (Sharepoint/IM/Exchange) features of SfB and O365 and when you add the growing popularity of MS Dynamics as a CRM and the continuing closer alignment between Dynamics and SfB they are well placed to also deliver the full SfB E5 Communications solution. Certainly there is also now an increasing interest too from the more traditional voice resellers to have some form of SfB offering in their portfolio."
Resellers can leverage either their own internal engineering skills, SIPHON's skills as a white labelled service or a combination of the two. "We aim to fill in the gaps and enable resellers to sell SfB solutions effectively," added Harris. "We have been deploying cloud UC platforms for seven years and developed some cloud-based software ourselves which help resellers to deploy SfB solutions and handle the ongoing management of SfB hardware and end points."
Microsoft is not new to this space and Live Communications Server (LCS) was first introduced about 10 years ago. SfB is just the latest release in the journey of Microsoft becoming a credible Unified Communications supplier as well as being dominant in IT. Traditional resellers should look to have some form of Microsoft offering alongside their traditional offerings as ultimately their end user customers are likely to be using some form of Microsoft product and the chances are that usage will continue to expand, believes Harris.
"Certainly at the Microsoft World Partner Conference in Toronto this year there was a very clear commitment to working through channel partners, and with its size and scale plus commitment to innovation and R&D Microsoft is bound to exert even more influence in the communications space moving forward."
Another priority area is the growth of video and collaboration. "Broadly speaking, we provide resellers and service providers with the same value proposition in video and collaboration that we've been delivering in voice and UC services, which is centred on technology enablement for our channel partners," explained Harris. "Firstly, we have invested in engineering skills and internal systems to ensure we have a strong engineering and technical support capability in video platforms as this is at the centre of everything we do in supporting our partners.
"Secondly we want to make the delivery and support of video and collaboration solutions easy and repeatable as historically deploying room based systems and MCUs has been both cumbersome and expensive. We have developed packages of hardware bundles for various room types from huddle rooms to large meeting rooms that are simple for our partners to sell and package to end users. We also then provide field installation services plus extended warranty and technical support to our partners and we are launching some new cloud-based Video as a Service (VaaS) offerings in the new year to complement our video hardware and engineering services portfolio.
"The combination of all of these items is what powers how we enable our channel partners to sell, deploy and support full packages of end point hardware and peripherals together with a white labelled cloud based VaaS proposition."
It is becoming increasingly clear that users do not see video as a separate application to voice and IT now, and it's important that any room system deployed works well and seamlessly into PC clients for remote and mobile users. "When end users then start to consider applications like desktop sharing and collaboration too, it's clear that video services can no longer be deployed and supported in isolation from other IT and voice platforms," commented Harris.
"A further key trend driving adoption is the significant reduction in costs in room system and MCU hardware and the availability of cost effective software based VMRs. Our partnering strategy is based upon making video a ubiquitous and repeatable service that can be deployed in volume and at a price that delivers this to down to the SME as well as the large corporates who have traditionally invested in large scale and complex video deployments. Those companies who make video simple to deploy and consume commercially will see significant success and we are working with our vendor partners to bring new VaaS and associated hardware bundles to market to address this."
The popularity of Skype and Facetime demonstrates the potential usage of video as an application and people now expect to have the same experience in the workplace and want to connect with colleagues who are in rooms and/or on their PCs and mobiles in a seamless and single video call or conference. "This consumerisation of video is driving the emergence of new and innovative video vendors and service providers who are looking to make the technology universally adopted by new cloud-based services and consumption models, and the previous barrier of video services being capital intensive and complex is quickly eroding," observed Harris. "We would expect to see this trend continuing with lower cost hardware emerging and the continued launch of new disruptive cloud video offerings that make video more mainstream and accessible for all types and sizes of end users."
Resellers and SIs will continue to play a major role in the delivery of advanced services like video and collaboration and their value is determined ultimately by how readily they can make complex technology usable within the end user environment, according to Harris. "Video has always been a specialist area, with niche players carving out successful businesses through deploying very complex video 'islands' for end users," commented Harris. "The approach of the SI and reseller today needs to evolve and become more focused, not on integrating video components but on driving video adoption and usage by integrating the video service into existing business processes and making it accessible to all staff and across rooms, desktop and mobile."•