Beyond e-mail and collaboration: Unified communications as a hosted serviceRurik Bradbury, Unison Technologies
Parallels – Optimized ComputingTM
2
Overview
• What is unified communications (‘UC’)?
• What is Unison?
• How is UC better than e-mail and collaboration?
• Is it popular?
• Why host it?
• What is involved in offering it?
• To offer UC, what are your options?
• Unison vs Microsoft
• Unison’s partner program
Parallels – Optimized ComputingTM
3
What on earth is unified communications?
• Telephony– PBX, voicemail, unified
telephone numbers
• Instant messaging
• Calendaring
• Contacts
• Free/busy status
• Other stuff– Video conferencing?
– Screensharing?
Get all communications…
…in one place
Parallels – Optimized ComputingTM
4
And what is Unison™? /1
• Unison is a server and a client that work together– Unison Server™ runs on Linux
– Unison Desktop™ runs on Windows/Linux
• Like Exchange + Outlook, but much better…
Parallels – Optimized ComputingTM
5
What is Unison™? /2
With Unison Server, the Unison Desktop client gives users all communication in one desktop app:
Parallels – Optimized ComputingTM
6
How is UC better than e-mail/collaboration?
– Makes a company “15% more productive”
– No more pointless pinging
– No more abuse of communications media (think: mass emails with 20 people CC:ed)
– No more juggling multiple apps and comms histories
– No more being unable to find important bits of info
– No more missing time-sensitive messages
“1 hour per user per day” saved
Source: Sage Research
Parallels – Optimized ComputingTM
7
Is UC popular?
• Not yet common among SMBs
• A majority of enterprises testing UC (per Microsoft)
– SMBs will want it too – EVERYONE wants it when they see it
• Hosted UC growth of 355% from 2007-11 (per Radicati)
– But just 45% for e-mail and collaboration
• Fast approaching a ‘hockey stick’ upward curve:
Today, we are here
Parallels – Optimized ComputingTM
8
So why ‘hosted’ UC? Customer benefits
Reliability Fully managed
Lower capital
investment
Core business
Flat costs after that
And also… telephony is now hostable!
Parallels – Optimized ComputingTM
9
Why host UC? Hoster benefits
Not a commodity
Very fast-growing but little competition (unlike plain old e-mail and collaboration products)
High revenues and margins
Charge up to $50 per seat per month – margins up to 50%
Very, very sticky
A company’s entirecommunications arehosted with you
Parallels – Optimized ComputingTM
10
What is involved in offering hosted UC?
Set them up in your own datacenter
Buy turnkey VoIP service wholesale from a telco:
Then you are ready to sell!
and others
Parallels – Optimized ComputingTM
11
To offer UC, what are your options?
4 major options available to hosters today:
Solution Cost Complexity ‘Hostability’ Sales model
MicrosoftExchange + OCS + PBX
High High Good Direct + partners
IBM Lotus High High Not good Partners (for SMB sales)
Cisco Very high High Poor Direct + partners
Unison Low / free Low Good Partners only
Parallels – Optimized ComputingTM
12
Unison vs MicrosoftKey points for hosters to compare:
Microsoft
How difficult to set up Easy Hard
Sales and marketing Little competition, anyone who sees it wants it
Well-known, but commoditized and hard
to get customers
Licensing fees Either free (ad-supported) or less than $4 / mo
More than $8 / mo
Revenues/seat/mo $40-50 for Unison
$15 for Exchange + OCS
Margins Around 50% Less than 15%
Your profit opportunity:
$20 profitper seat/mo
$2.25 profitper seat/mo
Parallels – Optimized ComputingTM
13
Unison vs Microsoft hosting – bottom line
$20 in profit per seat per month (on $40 revenue)
MicrosoftExchange + OCS
Just $2.25 in profit per seat per month (on $15 revenue)
Parallels – Optimized ComputingTM
14
The Unison Partner Program
• Join for free
• Offer Unison as a hosted service
• Volume discounts
Learn more at unison.com/parallels
Or e-mail us at [email protected]
Thanks for your time!
Top Related