Bogdan Carstoiu, CEO of 4PSA delivers an afternoon session
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — One of the first things Bogdan Carstoiu, of 4PSA touched on in his presentation was his company’s definition for unified communications, which can be difficult for customers to appreciate.
He says it, “centralizes and organizes communication flows to make them available with minimal effort, from any location and device at any time. As these communication flows produce information, the unified communications hub stores it and prepares it for later review according to the rules established by the user.”
The message hosts need to communicate to customers, if they’re trying to sell them on unified communications, is to tell them how UC will help.
The first step is to cover the basic communication flows like telephony and fax. Step two is adding evolutionary applications, like telephony apps, gateways, presence and IM. The third step, he says, is adding revolutionary applications.
What exactly “revolutionary” in this case can be difficult to determine, as it can vary from customer to customer.
However, the messaging around the service should be around the immediate advantages. Key selling points: fast real-time conferencing; reducing communications cost; ease of working remotely; easy access to archived communications; and many others.
There is a lot of legacy UC installed (such as physical PBXs), and for many customers, it’s more a matter of organic evolution to these new services. There is no conceptual difference.
A big advantage for hosts in the unified communications space is that, while the big telecommunications providers are moving in the space, they’re offering a limited product set designed to sell their legacy infrastructure. Hosting providers don’t have such limitations on their services.
Interestingly, Carstoiu sees social media as part of the same thing as unified communications. That is, it’s communications that needs to be incorporated into the centrally managed flow or of communications.
Integrating social media is actually extremely technically complex, because each of those things is an aggregate of resources. Providing an integration of those things is very difficult, but it would have great rewards. Even more than telephony, he says.
He says building the social media component into the unified communications platform is a major priority for 4PSA (which offers the VoIPNow platform). The company has been working on it for a while now, and is planning to bring the product to market some time later this year.
Hosting providers should learn the user stickiness lesson from social networks, he says. Users have a hard time leaving a social network, due to data, community and feature-sets. This also applies to unified communications.
About Liam Eagle
Liam Eagle has worked as a contributor to the Web Host Industry Review since its inception in 2000, and as editor since 2003. He has been editor of the WHIR's print magazine since its launch. His daily involvement in the gathering and reporting of Web hosting news and his regular interaction with Web hosting leaders gives him an uncommonly broad appreciation of the issues and tends facing the business. Through his WHIR blog, Liam spots Web hosting trends and offers opinions on the industry-wide impacts of major developments and the motivation behind big announcements. Follow him on Twitter @liameagle
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