Jan-Feb 2020 - ChannelVision Magazine

AT YOUR SERVICE: XAAS Prodoscore, a sales employee visibility company, announced a new strategic part- nership with AppSmart, a channel-led, one- stop-shop for all B2B technology services. Bundled solutions comprising unified com- munications, Office365, GSuite, CRM and Prodoscore applications will now be avail- able for sales teams and distributed work- forces, distributed by AppSmart agents. AppSmart established a business servic- es marketplace by operating as a new next- generation master agent. With Prodoscore, agents can now offer a wider variety of SaaS productivity and communications solutions. This arrangement also gives agents a new recurring revenue model without hiring new resources, allowing them to remain focused on core competencies, said the companies. Now a recognized member of the Alliance consortium, AppSmart is aggressively expand- ing its channel presence as part of launching its marketplace to the agent channel. “AppSmart is one of the most innovative companies we have worked with, which sets them apart from the competition,” said Cri- santos Hajibrahim, chief product evangelist at Prodoscore. “We see this as a great op- portunity to help sales teams and distributed workforces to improve their productivity and effectiveness as part of this new set of bundled offerings with AppSmart.” Prodoscore, AppSmart Partner to Improve Workforce Productivity According to a survey of technolo- gy decision makers representing near- ly 1,300 companies in North America about their unified communications purchasing habits and plans, half of large companies (more than 1,000 employees) and nearly 75 percent of smaller companies have yet to make the investment in unified communica- tions technology. What’s more, of the companies that have yet to invest in UC, nearly 64 percent plan to do so within the next two years. “The North American data is con- sistent with the overall global find- ings from the survey and reinforces the significant opportunity the UC market presents over the next few years,” said John Macario, senior vice president of channel marketing for Ribbon Communications, which sponsored the survey. “One of the really interesting find- ings in the North American results is that, despite the movement of many business applications to the cloud, 40 percent of the respondents said they preferred a premises-based solution, followed by 30 percent who preferred a cloud or hosted model and 25 percent being open to either premises or cloud.” In terms of provider type, the survey found no clear-cut winner as far as buyer mindshare when it comes to purchasing UC. Compa- nies that have yet to adopt UC ser- vices plan to purchase them from traditional providers (17 percent), mobile providers (16 percent), cable providers (13 percent), equipment providers (13 percent), IT services providers (12 percent), over-the-top providers (10 percent), phone re- sellers (10 percent) and competitive providers (9 percent). Among those organizations that have already adopted UC services, however, “traditional providers” make up the lion’s share of purchases. UCaaS Opportunity Largely Still Untapped Generally, IT professionals say that it’s getting easier to justify public cloud expenditures to upper management, accord- ing to analysts at 451 Research. And while cost savings (hardware and software) have always been a solid justification, a variety of other factors are proving per- suasive, including faster time to market, resource scalability, and reduced internal footprint, show 451 surveys. Make the IaaS Case Source of UC Solutions Purchases Traditional providers 34% IT services providers 13% Cable providers 13% Equipment providers 13% Over-the-top providers 10% Mobile providers 6% Competitive providers 6% Phone resellers 5% Source: Ribbon Communications Source: Spiceworks 68% 69% 52% 56% 50% 92% 12% 40% 17% 39% 12% 32% 10% 30% 14% 30% Server virtualization Storage virtualization Application virtualization Desktop virtualization Data virtualization Network virtualization Technology Maturity Analysis Source: Computer Economics Percentage Currently Investing Percentage with Technology in Place High Investment/ Low Ad ption 1. Security Technology 2. SaaS 3. Business and Data Analytics 4. ERP 5. CRM 6. Human Capital Mgmt 7. Mobile Applications 8. Mobile Devices/Wearables 9. IaaS 10. E-commerce 11. Supply Chain Management 12. Enterprise Asset Management 13. Internet of Things 14. Artificial Intelligence 15. Robotic Process Automation Low Investment/ Low Adoption Low Investment/ High Adoption High Investment/ High Adoption 1 3 2 4 5 10 6 8 11 12 13 14 15 7 9 What are the key factors needed to build a business case for IaaS/public cloud investments at your organization? Source: 451 Research Faster time to market/agility Resource scalability based on application/workload demand Reduces internally owned/managed datacenter footprint Hardware savings Improves application performance/availability Access to advanced capabilities embedded in public cloud platforms Improves efficiency of IT staff Preference for consumption-based model for IT resources Software licensing savings Extends geographic reach Other 35% 34% 33% 29% 28% 25% 23% 17% 16% 11% 7% 56 CHANNEL VISION | January - February, 2020