Whale Hunting Creates Opportunity for Hosted UC Providers

In case you hadn’t noticed, Vonage, Ring Central and 8×8 (the billion dollar babies)  have all but abandoned the SMB space of the hosted UC market in search of larger customers.  This  creates a unique opportunity for smaller service providers that can move quickly to fill the vacuum, and that are sufficiently adept at helping SMBs negotiate the transition from on-premise PBX equipment to the cloud.

Venture Capital funded companies need to show growth.  Growth comes by closing bigger deals, which in turn necessitates an increasingly large sales apparatus.  Large sales organizations can only sell big ticket items or cookie cutter widgets that don’t vary from customer to customer (this is the reason why telcos sell commodity service like bandwidth or dialtone and have not been successful selling much of anything else).

Selling hosted UC is definitely not like selling a widget.  And, selling hosted UC to large enterprises is a much different job than selling hosted UC to SMBs.

Peter Radizeski makes much the same point when he notes that there is no clear leader in the hosted UC space as yet.  Referring to the market segmentation diagram he further states that:

“The winners will be by segment. The same company at the bottom of the pyramid will not be the winner at the top. As Vonage Business execs are finding out, it is hard to sell that logo into an enterprise. As 8×8 experienced, moving up to mid-market is an expensive and time consuming effort.”

So, with the  bigger guys focusing on the top of the pyramid, the field is clear at the bottom for  ITSPs that can figure out the sales process (most have not).

In such an environment, where success hinges on high-touch sales and support,  Interconnects, ISPs, Agents and VARs need a white label hosted UC provider such as Skyswitch.  The white label business model allows smaller service providers to leverage proven expertise and infrastructure while directing operational capital into the areas where it will earn the highest return.

To learn more about SkySwitch and Web Centrex, our white label Hosted UC platform contact us today.