The collaborative environment is constantly evolving, particularly in this disruptive time, as new technology and solutions appear on the market. I sat down with the Collaboration Product Manager for Node4, Mark Phelps, to discuss the future of what he calls “collaboration as a service“.
Before he became the product manager for Node4, Phelps worked for Cisco for 17 years, and before that, he was with Nortel. That means this is a man with a lot of history in the UC environment.
As Phelps explained, it’s his role with Node4 to look at what customers need in the mid-market sector, and develop a portfolio for their indirect and direct sales models. “When we take our collaboration services to market, I see the indirect route being in two flavours. The first will involve a small number of white-label type channel partners, with high volume sales and lots of support. The second, will be a lower-volume tier of partners with fixed proposals.”
So, What’s New for Node4?
Perhaps the biggest development for Node4 has been the upcoming launch of its new collaboration service based on Cisco HCS. Phelps assured me that the company would be branding the service, though the current generic name is just “UC as a Service powered by Cisco”.
There are only around eight or nine HCS providers in the UK, and most of them focus on large enterprises. Where Node4 differentiates itself is by focusing on the mid-market area, on volumes of between 100 and 1000 users. The platform itself has been built to suit the economics of the mid-market, delivering a fully-featured enterprise solution, at a price point more suitable for Mid-Market.
“We can do this because our whole company is a cloud-based organisation. We have more than 900 customers now, and a range of complementary cloud-based services, because the company was built with cloud economics in mind. When we deliver our collaboration services we won’t have the silos that some of the bigger businesses have ramping up their costs. We’ll have a more economic basis that allows us to deliver the same services, more efficiently.”
Although Node4 can deliver on premise solutions it prefers to deliver through the cloud. Phelps also noted that they can offer a hosted service, delivering on premise physical servers that are managed through the Node4 infrastructure. They can also have dedicated managed service hardware in their data centre, through their Co-Lo service.
“We have a complete suite of deployment options. One of the biggest strengths of Node4 is that we’re flexible to the needs of our customers.”
What’s Trending Now for Node4?
For Node4, and a lot of other companies in the UC space, the hot topic is the move to the cloud. In a world where there’s plenty of uncertainty around Brexit and the future, people are searching for a way to move to a more predictable model. “People want an OPEX model that grows and shrinks with their needs, rather than a CAPEX investment that doesn’t scale. That’s what we deliver.”
Node4 is launching a full set of collaboration solutions. Where Phelps sees the company going, is from a UC environment, to a full collaboration environment, which means adding more applications into the suite. “If you think of UC, it’s fundamentally voicemail, voice, and IM, with maybe a unified message store. However, if you start adding new solutions like Cisco Spark and WebEx, you get more of a collaboration suite.”
Spark is the first messaging app that allows Node4 to move into the world of AI or IoT. As Phelps noted: “Collaboration has been defined as two or more people working together towards a common goal. I think that needs to change into two or more people, things, or machines working towards the same goal. That’s where I’m going to take this platform.”
For Phelps, collaboration alone is restricted. If businesses want a real return, then they need to link collaboration to business applications. Now, with IoT, APIs, and AI, we could finally be in the perfect place to start benefiting from the advantages that collaboration tech has to offer.
Cisco HCS vs Spark
I wanted to learn a little more about HCS, and Cisco Spark. Phelps explained the offerings to me in greater detail.
“HCS is Cisco’s architecture for cloud delivery of its collaboration applications. It’s a validated architecture that’s underpinned by Cisco’s cloud and managed service program and we’ve used it as part of our solutions. HCS is all the Cisco apps that you know and love from the enterprise world, with a shared physical infrastructure, based on Cisco design, and with a management layer using VOSS fulfilment and provisioning tools, that allows us to operationalise very efficiently. Our solution then wraps in our SIPLink service, our connectivity and managed services, and also training.”
For Node4, the biggest focus is on driving customer adoption, that’s why they bundle services together that give training to end-users. When it comes to the relationship between technology, processes, and people, a lot of companies focus on the processes and technology, but they don’t think about the people.
“If users can’t adopt the tech you create, then they’re not getting any value. That’s why we’ve created a user interface that’s second-to-none.”
Cisco Spark is a bolt on to that collaboration solution, it’s an integrated Hybrid cloud, a messaging and meeting environment, and an application that’s based on Cisco data centres. “Spark has three elements, messaging, meeting and calling. We provide the calling aspect to the Cisco Spark Service, so the user gets a full experience.”
Building Custom Solutions for the Midmarket Customer
Before we wrapped up our meeting, Phelps was keen to point out that Node4’s focus on the mid-market user isn’t just to deliver a one-size-fits-all solution. They’re dedicated to evaluating the environments of their customers using a range of tools, including cloud-readiness assessments, and proposing a solution based on unique needs.
“It’s about consultative selling. There are three steps and one rule. The steps are, build a relationship, collect data, suggest a solution. The rule is that you start with a relationship and don’t progress until you have the right understanding. Most people go to a business with a solution in mind and try to make it fit. We want to build a solution that’s right for our customers.”
