The Cloud is Ready - Are You?

I keep getting excited and disappointed about the potential of UCaaS, but the perfect storm is forming. The cloud will do well in 2013, the question is who is going to be selling it? It should be UC VARs and SIs.

History of Misfires

I was really excited early in the cloud game, but it was too early. In the early 2000s Level(3) introduced a service called 3Tone - based on a Sylantro softswitch. If you recall, Level(3) operated the AOL network, thus had POPs filled with modems everywhere. AOL was dying out, so Level(3) figured those POPs could provide local numbers across the country. 3Tone was a wholesale service, so dealers were recruited to brand and sell it.

Also about that time, Vonage was educating the world with expensive advertising. ISPs were expanding their data services with hosted voice. VoIP was clearly the future, and the cloud offered Centrix-like features without Centrix-like problems. But it was too early.

Level3 wasn't committed. Sylantro didn't have the wherewithal, and 3Tone was soon aborted. ISPs were finding voice was a lot harder. Some did well; many failed. Vonage was found guilty of patent infringement for its hosted service. Several consumer hosted providers went belly-up and even mighty AT&T killed its hosted platform.

There were multiple problems: bandwidth availability, immature features, expensive endpoints, few had POE, 911 complexities, and so on. The economy wasn't strong, and reliability issues were scaring off prospects.

2012 the Cloud Took Shape

Last year we saw a number of big things happen. For the first time ever, Gartner identified companies in its UCaaS Magic Quadrant report as Leaders - four of them! Avaya unveiled its Collaborative Cloud. Cisco got traction with its HCS solution aimed at enabling service providers to get into UCaaS. ShoreTel acquired M5. NEC announced 3C, BroadSoft announced UC-One, and Mitel expanded its AnyWare offering to include PaaS solutions.

Every major premises vendor now has a cloud angle.

Meanwhile the same thing happened with the major carriers. AT&T, Verizon, XO, Cbeyond, and countless others double-downed on hosted offerings. Verizon connected its presence solution to Google Apps. Even distributors like Synnex and Arrow jumped into the game. Being remote became far more common, both as remote workers and mobile workers opted to engage where they were instead of at the office. "The cloud" became a buzzword generally embraced by IT.

2012 was the year that the cloud's ducks lined-up in a row.

What to Expect

2013 is going to be a big year for UCaaS and here's why:

• ShoreTel and Cisco are making big promises about hybrid solutions. It doesn't have to be cloud or premises, it could be both.
   
• The productivity conversation is shifting from the newest mobile phone to the newest mobile app.
   
• Cisco HCS is building traction. Thirty-four signed partners mostly over 24 months. Cisco HCS terms and conditions require a commitment of a 100k seats, so that's 3.4 million seats already (sorta) sold.
   
• BroadSoft is gaining traction with significant expansion internationally, SIPConnect 1.1 compliance, and expanded video solutions.
   
• 4G/LTE will drive rich UC feature functionality on mobile devices.
   
• WebRTC will result with more video-enabled endpoints than ever before.
   
• Hard phones are getting better and less expensive: Avaya, NEC, Mitel, Cisco, and ShoreTel will all offer SIP endpoints in 2013. Polycom has a new sub $1k video phone with BlueTooth.
   
• Lync allure will extend to SMB with hosted options.
   
• Conferencing is redefining itself with desktop sharing, video, and wideband audio. Vidtel and Blue Jeans are well positioned to enable any-to-any video conferencing. Expect new video services from Polycom and Vidyo in 2013.
   
• Economics are favoring hosted. Not only are the prices dropping, but the accounting departments favor the hosted services.
   
• Initially a weak spot, hosted services are becoming viewed as part of a cost-effective means to a disaster recovery and high availability plan.
   
• Major carriers and multiple hosted service providers are shifting rich API capabilities to cloud solutions as well.

The modern UC VAR and SI needs to have a strong premises and hosted solution set. The barriers of the past are going away. Many cloud providers have experienced 30+ percent quarterly growth for multiple years now. If you don't have a strong cloud strategy, you better get one.