52 / 84
Interestingly, the biggest myth
that the survey explodes is the tech-
nological advantage of the millen-
nial “digital natives.”
“Although younger workers see
their older co-workers as slower to
adopt new technologies, our data
shows that adoption levels are quite
even across age ranges,” the report
noted. “Older workers are just as
likely to use as much technology as
their younger peers.”
That said, younger workers are
more stressed out, anxious and
frustrated by technology than their
older peers. For example, in the
U.K. more than a third (36 percent)
of Millennials aged 18 to 34 find
using technology at work stressful,
compared to only a quarter of those
aged 55 and up (25 percent).
This seemed counter-intuitive at
first, but when one considers that
“it just works” technologies such
as smartphones, social networking
and so on have become completely
ubiquitous in the personal lives of
younger workers, the fact is that the
software used to get work done in
the office hasn’t historically met that
same standard of simplicity.
“Perhaps when Millennials in the
office are confronted with a messy
array of technologies that do not
function seamlessly, stress levels
increase,” Dropbox noted. “For
workers who have been around a bit
longer, technology has always been
a work in progress.”
Changing Technology
Adoption
Channel partners see some
trends of their own that are changing
how end-user customers use commu-
nications technologies to do business
– especially the move to the cloud
and to unified communications (UC).
“So many organizations are
finally fully embracing the full gaunt-
let that UC has to offer,” said Josh
Lupresto, vice president of sales
engineering at Utah-based master
agency CarrierSales. “It’s no longer
just Hosted Exchange. It’s Hosted
Exchange, document collabora-
tion in real time, chat and CRM, all
under the same roof, so companies
can grow and scale.”
On the UC front, businesses are
starting to expand the functionalities
that they actually use – most nota-
bly, video and presence technology
are seeing increased adoption,
often working hand in hand. But in-
tegrated ways of working across the
board are increasingly sought-after.
“There is no question that the
decentralized workforce is a driv-
ing phenomenon,” explained Sam
Ghahremanpour, president at UC
and cloud PBX specialist Broad-
voice. “But when you think mobility
and teleworkers, you have to under-
stand that they want the same per-
formance across laptop, tablet and
phone, whether they’re at HQ, their
home office or a coffee shop.”
He added that UC has become
considerably more democratized
than it was even 24 months ago.
“UC used to be a lofty term that
was pitched to higher-end clients;
now it’s much more within the grasp
of your average customer, whether
they’re an SMB or a large enter-
prise,” he explained. “And it’s the
same with the video piece – that
used to be very high-end technol-
ogy for a very few. And now the bar-
rier to entry is much lower, and it’s
much more commonplace.”
And those systems are increas-
ingly in the cloud. Dominic Antonini,
president at technology distribu-
tor and master agency, Telecom
Brokers, noted that businesses are
rarely buying boxes these days.
“It’s very rare that someone
wants to buy a new premises-based
PBX system,” Antonini said. “Back
in the ’90s they wanted that 100
percent of the time. Today, it’s may-
be 5 percent. The question almost
all businesses we serve are asking
is, do I keep my existing system or
convert it to a cloud-based system?”
Bringing cloud and UC together
is an undeniable change as well:
One of the biggest and hottest mar-
kets at the moment is UC as a ser-
vice, or UCaaS market.
“This is a market that’s only
9 to 12 percent penetrated to-
day,” explained Drew Lydecker,
president at master agency AVANT
Communications. “But for UCaaS,
the deals are very, very large, so
it’s an opportunity that never ex-
isted before. We think of it as the
three Cs: Cloud, colo and carrier/
connectivity, and all three are be-
ing disrupted right now.”
Antonini has also seen a trend
toward carrier migrations – the rise
of the cloud has brought into play a
lot of smaller service providers.
“It used to be really hard to get
customers off an AT&T – but now,
customers are more open than ever
to switching to new service provid-
ers,” Antonini said, noting that the
market changes have driven Tele-
com Brokers to expand its portfolio
from a comfortable 50 to 60 provid-
ers to now, up to 170. “Today, it’s
the applications and their business
needs that are driving business in-
vestment, whereas before it was a
question of just saving them money
with a replacement service.”
Another top trend is the con-
sumerization of IT. With the advent
of more and more fiber availability
and the rise of the app-centric
economy, consumer-grade and en-
terprise-grade options are starting
to blend together. Channel partners
have a role to play in educating
their customers.
“The business environment
of the future is going to quickly
move to a be more along the lines
of Slack, HipChat, WhatsApp,”
explained Greg Praske, CEO at
master agency ARG. “Those con-
sumer-oriented apps are quickly
leaking into the business environ-
ment because it’s how people want
to interact. The good news is that
business-appropriate options like
Cisco’s Spark are here now with the
appropriate controls, persistence
and security. The channel partners
who have experience in integrating
voice, collaboration, email, chat,
etc., are in the position to assist
companies in their evaluation of
what’s right for a particular company
and then assist with the implemen-
tation and support.”
52
CHANNEL
VISION
|
July - August 2016