Never trust a computer company with your telephony

SMALL AND MEDIUM-sized enterprises are increasingly buying their most mission critical systems from suppliers with the worst record of reliability.

Speaking at the launch of its new hosted IP telephony systems, one telco boss admitted that the IT crowd are muscling in on the comms business, despite the inferior track record of uptime of computer suppliers.

Tier 2 UK telco Gamma Telecoms, said it is increasingly using IT VARS and systems integrators to sell telephony to small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Traditional comms dealers are being ousted from this market, despite the fact that IT resellers have little understanding of the nuances of voice communication, and have traditionally sold systems that are far more likely to crash.

"No business would survive if its phone went down as much as its computer systems are likely to," admitted Gamma marketing director Richard Bligh, “and yet the comms dealers don't seem to be able to capitalise on their history of reliability. It's IT VARs and systems integrators who are making the fastest headway in the IP telephony market."

The telephony market divides into two camps of very different local suppliers. There are ‘hairy arsed' telecoms dealers, who traditionally supplied phone systems. They could speak plain English, fart and chew gum, all at the same time. They had the unique ability to communicate with BT and understood, for example, that if a line was due to be installed a week on Tuesday, that meant that was the day the BT engineer might actually think about turning up to start the job. Before finding out he'd forgotten a tool.

In the other camp are the IT resellers, who speak a fantasy language and make ludicrous promises about paradigm shifts. In recent times, IT resellers have become increasingly popular, while comms dealers, with their lack of social skills and inability to mouth popular platitudes, increasingly miss out on the deals.

"IT resellers are at home talking about IP and these days IP telephony installations can be plug and play," said Bligh.

But Bligh said it would be tragic if traditional skills were to die out. "We need people who undrsand the importance of voice quality, and who don't think voice telephone calls are just another application," said Bligh.

Gamma is currently launching a recruitment drive for more companies to sell its IP telephony services to SMEs. "We're going to make it easier for partners to stop selling on price, and start talking up the applications," he promised. µ