Delivering Telephony Services

A new partnership to ease the provisioning and management of enterprise phone services provides lessons at every level for ISPs.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [October 3, 2008]

Many ISPs are eager to deliver IP Telephony (IPT) to their business customers, but find that when they walk in the door, they step into a political minefield.

The PBX people fear job losses, and the IT people want to take over. Most of the time, if you're an ISP person, you identify with the IT people and when you talk to the PBX people, you see a mini version of the ILEC that has been trying to crush you ever since you founded your business. So you take sides.

But it doesn't have to be that way, says Kristi Siple, vice president of marketing at Mountain View, Calif.-based management software provider Visionael.

"We provide a collaborative process," she says. "If a company has one group sending out phones, another setting them up, and a third group doing the provisioning; if you have people in different areas and it's difficult to communicate, we have a grid product that everyone can use at the same time. It will keep track of the workflow. Our customers can easily see the value. They can see the time savings they'll achieve (instead of communicating with Excel spreadsheets or by phone)."

Office politics in large enterprises can be complicated, and taking sides is counterproductive to a sale. "Many enterprises have 'Chinese walls' between the people who control the servers and those who control the applications. With IPT, it's mostly network guys, and some PBX guys. They all need an IP mentality, and usually the IT department has the IP expertise. It can be tough to bring them together, but you have to make the sale to both sides. You need buy in across teams."

The product
The company delivers what it calls its IP Telephony Automation Solution (IPTAS). The system helps enterprises transition from PBX to IPT. Once they have made the transition, it keeps track of patch data and user information and allows the company to manage its phone system from one location.

The system runs on Debian Linux or Sun Solaris. It requires Visionael's Network Resource Manager (NRM) product, and works with Cisco's CallManager and Unity software.

In addition to the collaborate work process described above, Visionael pitches the product as a significant time saver. The product brochure describes PBX to IPT migration as a five step process that can take years, with IPTAS saving on average between one month and one year, depending on the complexity of the change.

In addition, the system allows the old PBX to handle calls and deliver them to the new system, allowing technicians to make the change incrementally, without disrupting the customer's business.

The system currently supports Cisco IP PBX systems and Nortel PBX systems. It will soon support Avaya / Siemens PBX systems and Avaya / Nortel IP PBX systems.

The channel
Visionael works with channel partners large and small, including the biggest integrators whose names you already know: IBM Global Services, HP, and EDS. Siple says that whether you're targeting large enterprise customers or SMB customers, the IPTAS product can help you provision faster and save time on projects.

Asked about pricing, she says it generally makes sense for integrators delivering at least 2,000 phones or more, across one customer or several.

"The majority of our customers are integrators, MSPs, communications as a service companies, and some large enterprises," she says.

Some migrations can be short, and others might last four or five years. It depends on what the customer is moving from and what they're moving to. To handle legacy equipment, Visionael is partnering with Dallas, Tex.-based Staktron Solutions, and expert in PBX equipment and also a Cisco specialist.

So there's one final lesson from Visionael's business: no provider works alone. Do what you can for yourself, but also find a good partner.

— End