Cisco Acquisition is validation
The recent announcement of Cisco's $1.71bn acquisition of BroadSoft Inc validates many discussions we've had for many years. I wrote my first CDW blog CDW Solution Blog on the changing contact center 3 years ago this coming January. As part of the "services" team at AT&T we launched Voice DNA, which was a way for AT&T to drive market share for VOIP over the traditional Bell companies. That was 11 years ago!!! Gartner has been publishing a UCaaS magic quadrant since 2009. (Side note, it included PanTerra, LightEdge, Cypress Communications and NORTEL--hehe- :)) As network performance has improved and Internet has become ubiquitous, organizations are leveraging the platform for more and more. Gone are the days of smaller firms buying a PBX, paying for software assurance, staffing to provide around the clock support and running an operations center to provide eyes and ears on the environment. As WAN technology continues to improve and network intelligence sits at a customer edge vs. a provider core (see Cisco buys Viptela), more smaller and midsize firms will leverage a package of technology from a firm as a service rather than buying, depreciating and managing. Started with productivity (Webex/mail/IM) and moved to Customer Relationship Management (CRM-salesforce, oracle on demand etc) and Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS). Just like email, some firms will keep it in house and some will outsource via UCaaS. If a customer has written a custom script into their PBX, they may well keep it just like firms who have scripted to Exchange for supply chain, order updates, compliance metrics etc.
Capgemini and LinkedIn Digital Talent Gap outlines: Over half (54%) of the organizations agreed that the digital talent gap is hampering their digital transformation programs and that their organization has lost competitive advantage because of a shortage of digital talent.
This specific metric may be the biggest reason firms accelerate their move to Hosted Voice and others. If you're a small firm and you need to invest in people to manage assets which can be consumed as a service... we all know where it ends. Cisco has validated this approach and marketplace, while possibly putting an arrow into Spark--or enhancing it.
Is the PBX dead? Maybe not but it's sure on life support! And, you can buy one of these on Jet!!
True words were never spoken "more smaller and midsize firms will leverage a package of technology from a firm as a service rather than buying, depreciating and managing" . Witness the plethora of "aaS" offerings.