When Allan Sulkin wrote: "The market for standalone communications systems less than 50 line stations accounts for about one fifth of all product revenues in North America, but closer to half on a global basis," he made my day.
For a couple of years, my buddies at Panasonic in Secaucus, NJ worked on a SIP product for the VS (very small) SMB market. I have the product and have been thinking about how many different verticals to deploy it.
The new system from Panasonic is available in two models: KX-TGP550-specsheet">KX-TGP550 (1 corded base + 6 (KX-TPA50) DECT stations) or KX-TGP500 (All DECT – 6 stations). This is not an IP/SIP PBX; it requires bandwidth and a hosted SIP solution. Either solution supports 3 CCS (Concurrent Call Sessions).
(KX-TGP550 - KX-TGP550)
What's typical is the temptation to use cheap gear behind the solution and installing in an environment with poor infrastructure. Done right, I think this little gem is capable of producing a solid residual revenue stream. Forget all the cabling and looping the pairs for the cheesy 2/4 line KSU-less phones still being manufactured, sold and purchased by SMBs. No more answering machines because voice mail/auto attendant is host provided. The VS/SMBs that ante up the dollars can have a robust solution that provides their businesses a professional front door.
Many verticals in the VS/SMB still need one corded desk phone whether it's for the receptionist or back office owner. This limits the investment in cabling and that is a good thing. All cabling won't disappear but delivering service to the customer must become less cable intensive. For the VS/SMB market, this is key since they can’t take the cabling with them and when they move their locations, those investments in infrastructure are lost.
Paired with ADTRAN's 3448 with enhanced software and protected using a small-form-factor UPS and ITW/Linx protector, customers get a real cool telephony solution with a stateful firewall, VQM (Voice Quality Monitoring) and VPN for the bookkeeper or boss needing remote access. The 3448 also can act as a WiFi controller. One needed improvement for those using the desktop phone solution: buy some signal wire and home-run it back to the UPS; cut the cord for the AC brick in half, splice both ends and plug the transformer into the UPS and the other end into the phone. Why? The phone does not support PoE. I told Panasonic to add PoE so users could buy PoE injectors and do the same thing to avoid power issues and improve system availability.
Now Panasonic has teamed with NEXTUSA. NETXUSA delivers pre-configured solutions of IP communications products from ADTRAN, Audiocodes, Broadsoft, Cisco, Digium, Edgewater Networks and Polycom. This new distribution alliance will provide easy-to-deploy and cost-effective wireless SIP end-point solutions that are tailored for the Digium reseller and Broadsoft carrier channels. Look at this model and you can begin to see another example of dematerialization. NEXTUSA is essentially offering the staging services that I wrote about previously and this reduces errors, costs and turnaround time.
For the resellers/VARs/Interconnects that want to make the customer sticky and still provide remote support, the ADTRAN 3448 with enhanced software is a good fit with the WiFi option for businesses in fast food and retail verticals. The ADTRAN latest AOS addresses PCI (Payment Card Industry) concerns.
Not everyone is going to bullet proof the gear and do the right things to ensure high availability but for those that do, I think they will reap the long term benefits and go the distance without the disruptions and deteriorating returns associated with low end solutions. There's a huge market in the VS/SMB space waiting. Getting the right host will make a difference and then getting decent/affordable bandwidth may end up being challenging. A host selling the voice app need apply and may the best host win.
