RoundtableUC&C13 Dec 2019 · 18 min read

UC Trends 2020: Finding a UCaaS Platform - Round Table

To get an insight into the trends and considerations that are set to drive UCaaS decisions in 2020, we spoke to the leaders in the UCaaS industry. Here’s what we learned from companies like Cisco, Centile, MetaSwitch, Mitel, and NetSapiens

Rob Scott

At a time where there’s no longer a “one size fits all” solution to communication and collaboration, businesses need a stack as flexible and agile as their strategy. The Unified Communications as a Service market is quickly becoming the go-to option for many companies, offering the perfect blend of forward-thinking technology and scalability.

By 2024, the UCaaS market is set to be worth around $79.3 billion, and countless vendors are stepping in to claim their portion of the sector. The question is, how do service providers choose the right UCaaS solution in today’s competitive landscape?

To get an insight into the trends and considerations that are set to drive UCaaS decisions in 2020, we spoke to the leaders in the UCaaS industry. Here’s what we learned from Cisco, Centile, MetaSwitch, Mitel, and NetSapiens.

How Does a Service Provider Choose the Best Platform and Vendor for Their UCaaS Service?

We started our search for answers in the service provider environment. After all, the people making decisions in today’s UCaaS space aren’t just the end-users interacting with a communication stack. Service providers need to think carefully about how they can embrace a platform and vendor that’s user-friendly, immersive, and suitable for their needs.

Justin Hamilton, Director of Centile:

The Director of Centile, Justin Hamilton told us that “Telecommunications services will always be emotive”. We’re living in an environment where a 5/9 dial tone availability is expected and demanded. This means that service providers need to opt for a solution that’s tried, tested, and proven. “Experience in this sector is essential, and not all devices behave the same way.” Choosing a partner with a solid financial background that can stand the test of time in a competitive space is a must.

At the same time, Hamilton believes that it’s crucial to select a device that’s mobile-ready for the modern landscape. Traditional office users are evolving, and many organisations need a more flexible strategy. A mobile-ready offering that offers excellent control and management will be essential for service providers that want to stay in control.

Additionally, Centile believes that businesses need to distinguish their proposition with their own label. “As you put effort in differentiating with bundles you should also choose a provider that enables you to keep your brand in the market, so you’ll be recognised as the provider of that unique offer.”

Sonali Karnik, Senior Product Marketing Manager for Webex Calling at Cisco:

Sonali Karnik told us that UCaaS has quickly become the primary environment for collaboration, communication, and workflow integration. “This is driven by enterprises’ need to achieve digital transformation, which helps them remain relevant and compete in the ever-changing digital era. When choosing the best UCaaS vendor, service providers need to keep in mind several factors including company viability, completeness of the solution, user experience, channel support, management, and total cost of operation. And of course, security, reliability and regulatory compliance.”

Karnik feels that service providers should consider how complete and compatible a solution is when embedding it into their environment. They need vendors that can keep them competitive in the market and integrate with their existing solution for full-stack functionality. “An important key to success is to consider overall user and management experiences. How well does the vendor bring all the workloads together into one application? The consumerisation of enterprise applications means users won’t compromise on user experience. Workplace transformation will be led by applications that transform the user experience (UX) and service providers should look for vendors that are focused on the end-to-end UX across all the applications and devices they use in the workplace.”

Dedicated channel support should be a consideration too. Cisco has always focused on providing service providers with the support they need. A vendor’s track record and brand recognition will also play a big part in any service provider’s selection, while security, regulatory compliance, and reliability are “non-negotiable factors”.

Chris Carabello, Senior Director Product Marketing Manager at MetaSwitch:

For the Senior Director of Product Marketing at MetaSwitch, the journey starts with service providers asking themselves whether the product platform and supplier are aligned to their needs. Service providers should ask themselves:

“Is it leveraging my network assets which enable me to maintain a sustainable, competitive advantage versus my competition in areas such as reliability, quality, and security, and allows me to better manage and control the Quality of Experience particularly important as the workforce becomes more mobile?”

SPs will also need to consider whether the solutions they’re looking into will deliver the functionality and features required to meet the needs of modern customers as they migrate away from legacy platforms. Additionally, are the solutions agile enough to support emerging requirements for different kinds of business, both horizontally, and vertically?

Rami Houbby, VP of Cloud Sales International at Mitel:

Rami Houbby told us that service providers need to find a vendor that’s flexible and equipped with the features required for excellent integration and OTT apps. This includes working with a vendor committed to open standards and third party integration.

“It is also often the case that Service Providers need to cater for both small and very large customers – they’re often selling UCaaS services into consumers and therefore need to be able to work with a vendor whose solution can support a single user right up to larger international businesses. At the large end working with a vendor that has a strong established brand present in the Enterprise space is highly valuable in building brand equity.”

The right UCaaS platform should also be carrier-grade, so that service providers can offer their customers the seamless experience they expect. Choosing a flexible and high-quality provider will give service providers better opportunities for differentiation in their go-to-market strategy.

“Finally of course the ability to deliver an excellent mobile experience is paramount in today’s mobile and app driven environment”

Jason Byrne, Senior Vice President, Operations at NetSapiens:

Jason Byrne told us that choosing a UCaaS vendor is an important step for everyone upgrading, improving, or just starting their UC package. “Start with the target markets and vertical’s in which you want to specialise and own. Once you have a good handle on your target segment, then start looking at the vendors next.”

According to Jason Byrne, companies need to find something that supports their business model from the beginning and arms them with flexibility. Additionally, tools need to be carrier grade with tier 1 value, but not tier 1 pricing, and credibility. “Pedigree is everything in this industry.” It’s also useful to look for a vendor that brings best-of-breed applications to the market as quickly as possible.

“Extensive APIs are a must to stay bleeding-edge”

Develop Your Own UCaaS Platform, or Buy Ready to Go?

As the demand for UCaaS solutions continues to accelerate, the way that companies approach the market is changing. Businesses now have the opportunity to build their own UCaaS platform using a mix-and-match modular structure, or they can buy something that’s already prepared and designed for success. While both solutions offer their own unique benefits, they also come with challenges to consider too.

We asked our UCaaS platform experts what they think the best solution will be for service providers as they move into the competitive landscape of 2020.

[caption id="attachment_25582" align="alignleft" width="200"] Justin Hamilton[/caption]

According to Justin Hamilton: “The value available through creating bespoke integrations and custom configurations can be significant. However, this does not demand that you develop your own platform. With the myriad of channels now needed to build a UCaaS platform, a fresh build with security layers and multi-level necessities is a massive undertaking and only a have really can get to market and achieved a decent ROI. There is a reason for this -it is complex and time-consuming.”

Hamilton noted that as soon as service providers have managed to get one part of their home-built operation working, the market requirements will have already shifted, and customers will be asking for something new. “Our recommendation would be to access APIs from your platform to get to market quicker with niche development to personalise your offerings. Let the vendors to the heavy lifting at the back end and build your brand and customer base.”

Sonali Karnik of Cisco said that they recommend always opting for a vendor-hosted solution. The work required in building and managing UCaaS and CCaaS solution is significant. It requires ongoing investments from service providers, rapid innovations, massive economies of scale, and a massive range of skills. As the market evolves, the process will become even tougher.

“Solutions such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, voice recognition, and other highly specialised technologies are only becoming more prevalent and widely used. The agility needed to deliver a constant flow of innovation and enhancements is essential to remaining competitive.”

Cisco believes that service providers have a unique value proposition in their ability to engage and serve customers with a complete solution that already integrates with their mobile networking, broadband and PSTN offerings.

“Partnering with a vendor solely focused on building and potentially operating the UCaaS solution is a win-win proposition”

Chris Carabello of MetaSwitch told us that developing a geo-redundant and carrier-grade platform that is capable of performing according to today’s demands is very daunting. Today’s platforms need to be able to deliver on the requirements of both today and tomorrow in a highly competitive environment.

“For this reason, our experience is that they prefer to partner with proven suppliers with a deep understanding of building communications software in service provider networks. These platforms should nonetheless be open and programmable to enable customisation and allow service providers to deliver their own unique experience.”

[caption id="attachment_19437" align="alignright" width="175"] Rami Houbby[/caption]

Mitel’s Rami Houbby said that building and buying is often a valid question for service providers making decisions about their future and go-to-market strategy. Usually, buying a ready-to-go platform is the best choice for simplicity, cost-effective performance, and reliable outcomes.

“Several Service Providers in the market that built their own platforms are now migrating away to commercial platforms for reasons including scalability challenges with home-grown platforms that can inhibit growth and that the pace of innovation pace can be challenged.”

Houbby noted that a valuable cloud solution can still be flexible in the modern landscape. It will come with a range of integration capabilities that allows Service Providers to build and expand their offering with new tech stacks and new routes to market. “A key difference between a Service Provider and Channel Partners is that most Service Providers want to go to market exclusively using their own brand and they therefore want a cloud-based infrastructure that offers flexibility and strong integration capabilities.”

Mitel believes that the MiCloud Telepo solution is perfectly designed for service providers with a multi-tenant and carrier-grade platform that they can brand themselves.

Jason Byrne told us that the build or buy question is one of the hottest topics in the industry. That’s particularly true after the Cloud Comms Alliance recently announced that the number one platform of choice is ready to go with around 70% of the market. Self-built takes the remainder of the environment, however.

“I think the savvy service providers have figured out, why not stand on the shoulders of those who tread before us. The two most common ready to go tracks in the industry have been that of Tier 1 platforms or those built on top of the freeware Asterisk platforms.”

The latter solution has always been the preferred option for build-your-own results. However, many service providers have faced the no.1 stumbling block. “Look for the disruptive business models before anything else, you won’t find them in Tier 1s.”

Full Stack or Multi-Vendor: Which is Best?

Just as service providers are forced to consider the benefits of build-your-own or pre-made solutions, they also need to decide whether they want to work with just one vendor on their solution, or multiple companies at once.

A multi-stack approach can make it possible to take advantage of various best-in-breed solutions from companies worldwide. However, full-stack also allows for simplicity, easy deployment, and a single bill to deal with each month. We ran the question pasts our experts to see what they had to say about the future of UCaaS deployment.

The director of Centile, Justin Hamilton, said that today’s vendors can’t be experts in all areas. As long as the SLA from the platform that a service provider chooses covers them, and the vendor has proven itself in the current marketplace, it’s safe to leverage its solution.

“By working with different vendors to create an end to end solution this will allow you to run the best of breed solution for your customers."

"For me, the more important point is to make sure that the vendors support strong APIs and have an open and flexible approach to vendor collaboration”

[caption id="attachment_25585" align="alignleft" width="157"] Sonali Karnik[/caption]

Sonali Karnik at Cisco felt differently: “In the near future, full-stack collaboration solutions with integrated devices will replace today’s point solutions. A good analogy is Blackberry – once the world’s preferred mobile e-mail solution with a mobile phone. In the end, the integrated smartphone approach that included and integrated all applications was the market winner.”

The Cisco communications brand is committed to developing a full-stack unified communications platform, and user experience and management will be crucial to all aspects of the UC solution in Cisco’s opinion. “Service providers can leverage that effort and avoid the distraction and cost of orchestrating multiple vendors, aligning vendor roadmaps, or doing the integration themselves. Instead, service providers can focus on their core competencies integrated innovative network and security packages, sales, and support.”

The comprehensive Webex Platform at Cisco offers a full collaboration suite, along with the option to integrate with a service provider’s hardware, network, security, and software solutions, as well as endpoint devices. This allows for a “truly end-to-end magical experience.”

Chris Carabello told us that MetaSwitch has noticed a trend among its service providers towards the multi-vendor environment. This could be a crucial indicator of where the marketplace is heading as we move into 2020 and beyond.

“Having the flexibility to select across the UC ecosystem for CPE, including endpoints, Call Recording and AI platforms, etc. maximises the service provider’s ability to meet a variety of customer requirements and manage costs vs. being “locked-in” to a vendor’s solution.”

Rami Houbby told us that the answer to our question depends on what the service provider wants to present to their end-user or channel partner customers. “If they are creating a tailored package involving a range of applications to address a broad range of business needs then having a single vendor providing the base telecommunications infrastructure is wise but choosing a vendor whose platform can enable integrations with multiple third-party vendors is important – this can also include the ability to host services with the likes of Google and AWS.”

Mitel currently has service provider customers using the MiCloud Telepo platform to allow them to provide a comprehensive suite of UCaaS services to an audience. However, at the same time, they also integrate applications into that environment. Those applications aren’t always telco apps, but they do support customers with diverse business needs. These apps feature everything from logistics and manufacturing tools to monitoring and productivity.

“From the customer perspective, they enjoy a single, seamless experience from the Service Provider for all of their needs.”

[caption id="attachment_25586" align="alignright" width="200"] Jason Byrne[/caption]

Jason Byrne of NetSapiens noted that the decision to go full-stack or multi-vendor is by far the most important decision that a service provider will need to make from a commercial perspective. The fundamental question to ask to make the right decision, is: “Who will control your margins, you or your vendors?”

According to Byrne, a full-stack solution brings a selection of immense advantages. Integration issues in these environments have already been taken care of. Additionally, simplicity and optimal user experiences are already available. “When there is one vendor for all your needs, that vendor usually has the same look and feel across all their offering. However, you are usually at the beck and call of that one vendor, and innovation usually comes at a steady, albeit slow pace.”

Alternatively, “The Multi-Vendor approach once you are over the very large hurdle of integration & consistent user experience, speed of innovation becomes the “Why.” Choose the disruptive business model 1st, it will outweigh any advantages full-stack or multi-vendor will bring.”

How Can New Service Providers Best Approach Differentiation in Today’s Marketplace?

Finally, as more service providers continue to emerge and evolve in the communications landscape, differentiation is still the name of the game. However, finding a way to set yourself apart from the competition isn’t always as simple as it seems. Many service providers are still struggling to prove that they have something different to offer than their competitors.

We asked our industry experts how new and evolving service providers in 2020 will be able to approach the issue of differentiation successfully in 2020.

Centile’s director told us that “Control is the primary key to differentiation and having said that, you need to be able to do all the basics effortlessly as a prerequisite. There are many levels of opportunity to differentiate from support, deployment best practice, marketing angles, bundling, platform choice and technology offerings to suit the differing user types. Price can play a part. However, this is far less of a pressure if you can demonstrate for example how simply you can work and evidence how customers are going to be more efficient.”

According to Centile, if you can show how a customer’s staff base will be able to save crucial time every month, then you can differentiate with ease and productivity. “I believe that sales training offers a lot of opportunities to protect margin and drive differentiation.”

Cisco’s SP for Webex Calling said that all markets and segments today have their own unique needs. Service providers are in the unique position of being able to bundle network and support services through Meraki, Cisco Webex, and more with Cisco.

“First, service providers can create product bundles and pricing optimised for their respective markets and segments. Another key area is simplifying and adapting the buying and on-boarding experience through an optimal mix of human and digital channels. They can also leverage the knowledge of their markets and customers to create offers targeted at specific verticals of business sizes.”

Karnik believes that there are unlimited opportunities in the Cisco ecosystem to build solutions as a service provider that are differentiated and unique. The key to success often lies in the go-to-market approach that the service provider uses to win the attention of the customer. Service providers need to offer solutions that are “easy to find, to try, to buy, to onboard, to adopt, and to grow.”

Metaswitch’s Chris Carabello acknowledged that the fight for differentiation is a significant issue for today’s service providers.

“Today’s business customers are seeking a UCaaS service that enables them to deliver effective, easy-to-use collaboration and customer engagement across its increasingly mobile workforce”

[caption id="attachment_25587" align="alignleft" width="200"] Chris Carabello[/caption]

To stand out in the landscape as we enter 2020, MetaSwitch believes that UCaaS providers need to focus on delivering the highest level of quality and reliability. These providers must focus on meeting the needs of their growing mobile workforces. This means providing a seamless and mobile-native user experience that ensures adoption and the utilisation of services. The key to success is driving a “happier, more loyal customer base.”

According to Rami Houbby, we’re living in a world that has been overthrown by the rise of apps, both for business users and consumers alike. A cloud-based UCaaS infrastructure, like the MiCloud Telepo solution might allow service providers to achieve differentiation by building a flexible experience for customers. The cloud will allow service providers to tailor their offerings to the needs of their customers with a single, seamless experience.

“Differentiation can happen in both the operating model and the go-to-market strategy. In the operating model, differentiation can include aspects such as OTT apps, third party integration with vertical orientated systems, and flexible billing bundles, etc.”

Houbby also acknowledged that differentiation can be achieved in the go-to-market model in a number of ways. For instance, companies can focus on certain size segments, or build things like collaboration bundles into their stack. “ It can also be around the focus channels community and their profile. For example, while the voice channel is an obvious route to market, what about using a sector such as estate agents as a source of leads for new businesses or businesses that are moving?”

Finally, Jason Byrne said that the current marketplace is noisier than ever before. “Offering similar features in an industry where average selling prices are dropping and 12X Spiffs are the norm. Forget speeds & feeds (feature differentiation), the industry is shifting, start by looking at the macro trends in our industry where Google estimates show that 80% of the global workforce is deskless. So, if the workforce is deskless why are we selling seat-based licensing.”

In Jason’s opinion, providing a flexible business model that doesn’t tie the company into a specific seat-based pricing strategy makes you a lot more compelling in the market. “Yes, you will need Mobile & Collaboration tools to address that other 80% of the market, but Seat-based-pricing will stop you in your tracks. Start with the right business model, the rest is easy.”

Do you agree with the insights of our UCaaS platform experts? How will you be planning your strategy to ensure that you succeed in 2020 and beyond? Let us know in the comments below or join the conversation on social media.

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