Increased VoIP Utilization and New Offerings Means Opportunity for MSPs
Posted on Mon, May 14, 2012
As managed service providers look to expand IT service offerings, they should look to VoIP monitoring considering the increased use of VoIP among companies. In fact, MSPs can expect the number of seats for hosted VoIP and unified communications services to more than double between 2012 and 2016, according to a report from Infonetics Research.
The report stated that unified communications service revenue increased by 33 percent in 2011, and the number of seats grew 44 percent.
While VoIP utilization continues to grow, suggesting general acceptance of VoIP among businesses, end users won’t accept any downtime for their businesses’ critical phone systems. The challenge of keeping VoIP systems performing to such high standards falls on IT professionals who are reliant on VoIP vendors and SLAs. MSPs can capitalize on this trend by offering VoIP monitoring as a standard IT service as part of a client’s ongoing monthly retainer. By monitoring VoIP systems, MSPs have an opportunity to deliver a value-added service and boost recurring revenue.
Download our VoIP brochure to learn how to use PacketTrap MSP to monitor clients’ Avaya systems.
We’ve kept an eye on Avaya, a leader in business collaboration and communications solutions, who is a partner of Quest Software. Avaya has made several strategic moves recently to capitalize on industry growth and demand. Seeing the opportunity for VoIP market expansion, Marc Randall, Avaya data networking chief, discussed the main initiative behind the company offering an expanded line of Ethernet switches for small and medium-sized enterprises and remote branches.
"We believe that we've got a unique opportunity to get tightly coupled with applications, Cisco's become so siloed recently that getting a tighter connection to the applications turned out to be a bigger, bigger challenge, and I think that's where the industry's going to go. If we can pull off tying the application to the infrastructure, where the applications run better, I thought this was going to be a great opportunity."
(5 Ways Avaya Can Stave Off Irrelevancy, Network World)
Avaya also recently began to leverage the cloud and strategically aligned with Level 3 Communications as its service provider for new cloud-based communication offerings, according to CRN. This project, described as Collaborative Cloud, follows in the path of other VoIP vendors that have pursued cloud-based UC strategies, including Cisco and ShoreTel. Learn more about the opportunity for MSPs when it comes to the cloud by taking a look at a post on an industry analysis of cloud computing growth.