Siemens UCaaS Cloud Solution: Slow But Steady (That’s Not A Bad Thing)

The VoIP/UC cloud is here, a.k.a. UCaaS, and will have a major influence on the Telecom industry as a transitional topology over the next 48-60 months. Drivers include, among others:

• Little capital available for a VoIP/UC project
  
  
• Outdated end-of-life equipment with little-to-no support from the manufacturer or VAR
  
  
• The need to lessen the complexity of managing multiple applications related to Telephony, Call Centers, and UC

Siemens has stated that there are other drivers as well:

• The Shift To IP is Compelling: 43% operating cost reduction via IP communications deployment
  
  
• The Mobile and Distributed World Makes UC Relevant: 80% of end-points are now mobile or distributed
  
  
• The Cloud is Disruptive – and yet 45% of enterprises are planning for some cloud-based UC in 2012

The cloud also offers:

• More flexibility
  
  
• Faster to implement
  
  
• Feature rich (depending on the vendor’s offering)
  
  
• Supports multiple sites

All of the above statements are significant, and indicates that the cloud is a force that is not only disruptive, but also gaining momentum either with interest or deployment in 2012 and beyond. Our firm, for example, has just been retained to deploy an enterprise-wide private cloud-based UC solution for several thousand end points. The cloud is here.

There are many providers entering the cloud space, now including Siemens as a public (vs. private) cloud offering. Like the others, Siemens is in the early adopter stage of the acceptance cycle with industry defacto standards to be developed. Most providers are catering to the SMB space to start. Typically, the SMB market buys more on price than features/functionality, and thus is a good testbed for deployment in order to get the provider’s model “right” longer term. A typical cycle for any new product in the market is to first offer the solution to the SMB market, get the “kinks” out via lessons learned, and slowly grow the offer to the enterprise.

I recently spoke with Paul A McMillan, Director Cloud & Virtualization Portfolio Management for Siemens on their Cloud-based offering. Here are some of the highlights from that discussion:

• Paul is excited about Siemens initial cloud offering. Paul sees drivers such as CAPEX vs. OPEX and downturn in the economy as initial drivers. Further, “under the covers,” Paul sees SMB IT folks having to do double if not triple duty as compared with their jobs just a short 36 months ago. Adding UC makes the enterprise even more complex and adds to the need to lighten the load and introduce another party.
  
  
• Paul states that the Siemens offer will be data-center centric and will provide geo-redundancy in the cloud to maintain a high availability model. Siemens will also offer security elements as part of their offering, including firewalls, SBCs, true multi-tenant service (not partitioned).
  
  
• Paul sees the network layer being the largest possible root cause of VoIP issues in the cloud. To facilitate these issues, Siemens will include in their offering both NOC capabilities and Network Assessments (pre install). Siemens will also offer SAS70 compliancy as well as virtualization as part of their offering.
  
  
• Siemens will be partnering with both VARs and carriers to present their cloud-based offering. The Siemens product will be, in some cases, white-labeled as part of a CLEC offering. Siemens will be partnering with several key carriers. Additionally, Siemens will not make it a requirement to purchase ‘x’ carrier as part of the Siemens offering as some competitors are doing.
  
  
• Siemens intent is to bring all capabilities and service offerings to the cloud model. Expect the Siemens cloud rollout to take place in stages.
  
  
• Siemens will expand on their current relationship with Google and its Google UC Fusion offering. Expect additional announcements from the Siemens/Google partnership in the coming months.
  
  
• Paul readily admits that the vendor community needs to do a better job to deliver on a 99.99% or 99.999 (4-9s and 5-9s respectively) in this early adopter stage of the UC cloud. This statement is true of the many providers I have been observing and reviewing. At this stage it is up to the enterprise and associated experts representing the customer side to set the bar for SLAs, expectations, delivery, and a quality experience for the enterprise.

Paul, in my opinion, is very aware of the dynamics taking place in the industry with new technologies and will look to introduce basic and advanced features and functionality in their cloud offering. I highly recommend to Siemens, as I would any other provider in the early offer stage, to get the product “right” prior to delivering to a full production environment – including reliability, technical offering, and user interface vantage points prior to a full domestic or global offering. As many enterprises have experienced with VoIP and UC , users do not want to be “guinea pigs” of VoIP and UC deployments (now in the cloud) and fixing software and hardware issues in their full-production environment. While many of these well known issues have subsided, a new model with dependencies on parties not part of the offer, including enterprise IT departments and carriers, all have to be accountable to deliver on the promise of quality and reliability in a fully converged voice/data/video environment. I think Siemens is up to and ready for the challenge for delivering a UCaaS offering to the enterprise. Siemens has answered the call from the enterprise community and marketplace for a UCaaS cloud-based offering.

To the enterprise user: I recommend taking a look at Siemens as one of your possible cloud solutions if you are considering UCaaS. Ensure your “homework” is done when considering a Siemens solution and ensure proper accountabilities, SLAs, financial models, delivery, and a quality experience for the enterprise. Start with a testbed and build on it.

To Siemens: this is a huge opportunity for you and the market is young. Ensure you deliver a model that is both reliable and robust to gain the acceptance and momentum to become a significant player in this exciting growth market segment.