Originally posted by hbiss:
What's your point? I doubt either of these two read this forum. We don't wear "I hate VoIP" T shirts. Our customers know full well that we are an Avaya Business Partner and I'm also sure they know Avaya has VoIP solutions.
My point is that we have been their telecom vendor for years yet the first customer didn't even ASK us about it, the second won't even TELL us what they are doing, they apparently went straight to their CGs.
To me this is a strong indication as to the direction this industry is turning. It's not a shift to data, but a shift in who will be providing telecom services in the future. Companies don't want to deal with two different people, they are seeing that they can have both voice and data handled by one person.
So it looks like we all will have to become CGs in order to remain in the telecom business.
-Hal
I think everyone will lose some business until we embrace the offering of data related services. IT companies don't do as good of a job serving voice customers yet, but our company has hired IT guys to be that one stop shop. There is nothing stopping you from doing so. None of us can be master of all trades, but the shift is here. If you are feeling it where you are at now, imagine how the big cities are feeling it. I see hosted VOIP on almost all bids now, and I wouldn't recommend that to ANYONE unless they were on fiber at all locations.
The only reason your clients did not come to you first is they must not have known you offered it, or felt it was out of your "scope."
All of that is correctable, but I agree we must take on some IT skills to continue flourishing.
