VARs cash in on demand for better collaboration

Unified Communications (UC) is one of the brightest spots in today’s technology landscape—a robust market that offers VARs many opportunities to deliver margin-rich solutions that seamlessly integrate best-of-breed products from leading vendors like Avaya, Cisco, IBM and Microsoft.

“The area in which VARs add the most value is their knowledge of collaboration and communications platforms, optimizing and integrating solutions for each customer’s unique situation,” says Jeff Salanco, manager of Tech Data’s Unified Communications Specialized Business Unit (SBU). “Expertise in networking, telecommunications and application deployment is the foundation for UC. VARs that understand the technology and how to tie it all together to solve realworld challenges are finding that UC is the top networking opportunity in the market today.”

The global market for UC products is forecast to reach $16.8 billion by 2015, according to a report from Global Industry Analysts.

Salanco adds that the primary motivating factors driving the market to UC solutions are corporate desires to modernize network infrastructure, enhance collaborative activities, reduce costs, increase productivity and improve business agility. “In some cases,” he says, “UC will achieve all of the above. And that’s why it’s such an attractive opportunity for VARs.”

UC’s Broad Reach

Through its Unified Communications SBU, Tech Data provides comprehensive, end-to-end solutions from the world leaders in unified communications. In fact, Tech Data is the only distributor to carry the UC products of Avaya, Cisco, IBM and Microsoft, all identified as UC leaders by Gartner Research. Key UC technologies are Internet Protocol (IP)-PBX, VoIP, presence, e-mail, audio conferencing, Web conferencing, videoconferencing, voicemail, unified messaging (UM), instant messaging (IM) and various forms of mobility.

“An exciting trend to watch is the growth of UC among SMBs,” says Salanco. “Certainly there has been an enterprise play for UC for some time, but now we’re seeing UC gain interest among SMBs—the sweet spot of the market for most of our VAR customers.”

For small business and mid-market companies that lack sufficient IT expertise and support, VARs can offer appliances such as the IBM Lotus Foundations Reach. Appliances like this provide integrated collaboration and telephony solutions that are easily deployed and managed by VARs.

UC’s plethora of products and technologies, however, creates exciting opportunities for VARs to make money from consultation, support and, of course, integration services, which are at the heart of all UC deployments.

VARs can offer a range of integration services and support around Unified Communications, says David Alexander, senior product manager for Microsoft.

“Customers want to integrate all of the ways people contact each other—e-mail, IM, voice and video—into a single environment, using a single identity, presence and inbox,” adds Alexander.

“We’re definitely seeing plenty of demand for integration services from companies that want to combine video and VoIP, and add mobile extensions to their desktopand server-based solutions,” says Steve Knutson, CIO of Marco, Inc., a VAR based in St. Cloud, MN.

Another hot area for Marco is providing managed services for UC.

“Managed services probably account for about 12 percent of our total revenue as a VAR, while UC managed services account for about 50 percent of our managed services,” adds Knutson.

UC managed services also are hot for Single Path, a Lombard, IL-based VAR specializing in UC and managed services.

“We’re doing very well bundling managed services on top of our UC implementation work,” says Rob Koch, managing partner, Single Path, a Cisco partner. “Managed services are a win-win for us and our clients. We get monthly recurring revenue, while clients get secure, reliable services at a fixed cost.”

Koch notes that his company was busier than ever in the summer of 2010 upgrading the UC solutions of clients that implemented UC three to five years ago.

“Anything to do with adding video, WebEx, presence and mobile connections has been very positive for us,” says Koch.

Pent-Up Demand Loosens Budgets

The push to refresh technology is coming from freed-up corporate budgets, says Richard McLeod, senior director for Cisco’s Worldwide Partner Collaboration Sales And Practice Management.

“Pent-up demand is starting to loosen budgets and is driving sales of UC solutions,” says McLeod. “Companies are looking to UC technologies to help them cut costs via video meetings, virtualization and cloud-based options; to improve productivity; and to connect their back-end business apps to mobile devices.”

For the past 15 years, enterprises have focused on lowering costs and improving execution by automating business processes and applying analytics to identify and respond to critical events faster, says John Del Pizzo, program director, Unified Communications and Collaboration Software, IBM Software Group.

“Unified communication and collaboration (UCC) is the next step in this evolution,” says Del Pizzo. “UCC accelerates processes and drives better results by addressing the human side of the equation when standard processes aren’t enough to get the job done.”

Del Pizzo adds that UCC improves the ability of people to find, reach and collaborate with the right colleagues, at the right time, through the most appropriate communication method for the task at hand.

“Customers want technology that allows them to streamline their ability to find and communicate with the right person anywhere and at any time from within familiar, easy-to-use software applications they use every day,” adds Microsoft’s Alexander. “That’s why Microsoft’s Exchange 2010 and our Communications Server products are based on the Microsoft Office System.”

The People Factor

This “people” theme is echoed by Steve Hardy, director of Global Product and Solutions Marketing at Avaya.

“One of the big focuses for us is to shift the dynamics of communication to put people first, to put the emphasis on contextual communications for individuals,” says Hardy

“Companies of all sizes are trying to improve communications with two goals in mind: to become more responsive to their customers and to improve the collaboration among their employees,” adds Hardy

The challenge is that there are so many communication solutions in the marketplace that it becomes confusing to know which one can better align with the business objectives and provide value right from the start.

“That’s where VARs—backed by Tech Data—can help tremendously,” says Tech Data’s Salanco. “VARs can provide presales advice, do network assessments, and then sell, integrate and maintain all those solutions.”