All will have a part to play in the channel – some Voip solutions will take Oscar winning leading roles whilst other provide supporting parts, the bit actors in a world where many will lose out and end up discarded on the cutting room floor.
Picking the right solutions is never easy, if it were there would be no need for this magazine nor would vendors spend huge sums developing and marketing these diverse, but essentially, disruptive products and applications.
And here is the paradox: Comms Business Magazine finds it ironic in an age of universal access to information and the overload it can bring that channel resellers today are clamouring for information when it comes to VoIP. They need to stay ahead of their customers when it comes to any form of new technology but technology, in the form of the internet and other media, is doing its level best to keep users well informed of developments and the business opportunities they can bring.
Such is the momentum building up behind VoIP we have decided to offer some solutions:
Comms Business Magazine will continue to report and address VoIP issues throughout 2006 in our regular scheduled feature articles and news items. Additionally however we have produced this extremely focussed ‘Reseller Guide to VoIP', separately published and issued alongside the April 2006 issue of Comms Business Magazine.
As mentioned before, resellers are seeking
information now; they want to know more about the
different technologies and what they can deliver for
their customers. Essentially many still want to know
why they should be looking at VoIP in the first
place.
Resellers need to understand how to compare
apples with apples – ‘How can I explain the ROI
for VoIP solutions’. And what about the bigger
picture – 21CN and the implications for their
business. Many resellers believe that 21CN will
come to mean BT becoming a gigantic hosted
applications company. And why then would they
need a channel to sell through?
Vendors talking the talk is one thing but as we
all know the VoIP walk itself can be something
entirely different. Resellers want to hear from users
who have actually taken the plunge already and
know that these solutions work. The resellers need
to have a warm feeling about VoIP.
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