I recently stumbled across an old acquaintance I hadn't seen in a long time: a peer-to-peer voice system for small businesses. Systems of this sort caused something of a stir a few years back. All the hullaballoo seemed to start when Avaya purchased a start-up called Nimcat, which developed a set of IP phones that could auto-discovered one another across a network. All intelligence was co-resident on the end stations, along with voice mail and automated attendant, so no independent PBX system or applications servers were needed. Sure, a lot of bells and whistles were missing--unified messaging, CRM integration, etc.--but it was in theory good enough for the very small businesses that were these things' target market. Rebranded one-X Quick Edition, Avaya sold them to customers not interested in a full-blown IP PBX or a traditional key system. Siemens Enterprise followed up with a peer-to-peer telephony system of its own, BizIP, which it sold exclusively in Europe and planned to later sell elsewhere as well.In this case, the peer-to-peer voice system comes from Advanced American Telephones, which sells handsets to consumers and small businesses under the AT&T logo. The peer-to-peer offering is called the AT&T SMB Telephony System. Up to 50 SB67030 IP phones connect to Ethernet switches and then auto-discover each other to create the voice network. A twist on the P2P telephony systems of yore, a built-in DECT base station is built into each of the phones, letting users connect a cordless handset or headset to the IP phone for mobility within the office.
However, P2P voice solutions on the market prior to the AT&T offering never actually managed to establish themselves. Avaya pulled one-X Quick Edition from its portfolio as part of a larger back-to-basics product rationalization initiative that followed its going private. By then Siemens, which has always had better success selling to enterprises rather than SMBs, already discontinued BizIP. So why does AT&T think it can succeed where two leaders in the business voice system market have so recently failed?
AT&T is counting on Avaya and Siemens' failures being due more to PBX firms not being able to effectively market peer-to-peer telephony solutions than there being an actual lack of demand for such solutions. Unlike a PBX developer, AT&T has no sales of legacy key systems or SMB PBXs that a peer-to-peer telephony system would cannibalize. (At least this particular division of AT&T markets no other voice systems to small businesses. Other AT&T business units, of course, are very much in the PBX resale business.) Rather, Advanced American Telephones has to date focused on selling digital, IP, and DECT handsets to small businesses and consumers. In a sense, the SMB Telephony System continues this since it's little more than a handful of desk phones, albeit with more intelligence built in than more run-of-the-mill models. And this AT&T division does not have a set of resellers already selling third-party PBXs to SMBs. So theoretically there is no bias in the channel toward more traditional PBX-based on voice systems.
However, it remains to be seen if AT&T will succeed where Nimcat, Avaya, and Siemens Enterprise failed. Since each SMB Telephony System will bring in only a small amount of revenue, AT&T will need to sell the product in fairly high volume to make this particular investment pay off. And will resellers and distributors trust Advanced American Telephones and AT&T, neither of which have an established reputation as developers of premises-based voice systems? It's very interesting to see a return of peer-to-peer, PBX-less voice systems. I'm just not sure how long they'll stick around this time. ### Follow me on Twitter!
