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Recognizing the Opportunities in the SMB MarketBill MillerVP Product ManagementDigium, The Asterisk Company
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Recognizing the Opportunities in the SMB Market
• Recognizing the Opportunities in the SMB Market(TMCU3-05)
•Tuesday - 09/16/08, 1:45-2:30pmMany SMBs find the idea of cutting their phone bill and, perhaps more important, being able to take advantage of applications that unify voice and data, very appealing. However, research also shows that SMBs are confused about the products on the market and often lack the in-house technical expertise to comfortably sort through the options. Vendors of all sizes are coming out with products that are designed to be easier to use and many big telecom equipment vendors are moving downstream from the enterprise market to SMB with tailored offerings, which only serves to add to the SMBs’ confusion. In this session, the presenter will help attendees better understand the factors affecting their opportunities in the SMB market and determine how they can make the most of its opportunities.
Presented by:
Bill MillerVice President of Product ManagementDigium Inc.
Why are you Here?
• Are you an end user?• Are you a reseller?• Are you an open source developer?• Are you a service provider? Hosted?• Are you a student?• Will you use twitter during the presentation?• Will you just plain text during the presentation?
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……….one more question……
Are you confused?
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SMB’s…..S…..M…..B…..!!!!!
So let’s look at the definition of an SMB in Wikipedia:• Super Mario Bros., a video game made by Nintendo
• San Miguel Beer, a local beer in the Philippines.
• San Miguel Beermen, a professional basketball team in the Philippines now called Magnolia Beverage Masters
• Server Message Block (alternatively, SMB/CIFS), an application-level network protocol mainly applied to shared access to files, printers, serial ports, and miscellaneous communications between nodes on a network, used in particular by Microsoft
• Seven Mile Beach, a name of several beaches
• Simulated moving bed, a method for countercurrent chromatography
• Small and Medium Business, a synonym of Small and Medium Enterprise which is a perceived commercial sector
• Small Mouth Bass, a fish
• Spartan Marching Band, the marching band for Michigan State University
• Steve Miller Band, a 1970s rock band.
• SMB connector, SubMiniature version B connectors for radio-frequency circuits
• Super Monkey Ball, a video game made by Sega
• Surface Marker Buoy, a surface detection aid used by divers
• Sveriges Medeltida Ballader, the 'official' collection of old Swedish ballads
• System Management Bus, a PC communication bus
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SMB’s…..S…..M…..B…..!!!!!
• Ok, just having some fun with you….
….seriously, when you talk to “our SMBs”,
if they are confused
YOU can help them!
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What is an SMB?
• Small Business & Medium Business• An SMB is classified as a business with 2-1000 employees• The divides vary by supplier, but typical number of users/seats/phones:
– <100– <500 – <1000
Classifications for SMB Today
• Lets have some fun here as well…
– Some companies call SMB 5 users– Some companies call SMB 50 users– IBM and others calls SMB under 1000 users– Some companies refer to as SME, Small Medium Enterprises as multi-site
businesses with up to 5,000 users
• For this session, let’s call all the following sizes SMB
• Each group has both common and specific requirements which we’ll address
– 1 to 10 Seats/Phones = SOHO, or Small Office - Home Office– <50 Seats/Phones = Small business class– <100 Seats/Phones = Small to medium business class– <250-500 Seats/Phones = medium mostly multisite business class– <1000 Seats/Phones = medium enterprise class
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Market Dynamics and Data
• Infotech: 70% of US SMBs are implementing, trialing, or planning a deployment with VoIP & Unified Communications
• A Savatar-Digium survey: over 90% of all enterprises, including SMB, would consider open source for their corporate telephony system
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SMB Explosive Market Potential
6.3M SMBs have <99 users in the US
Source: AMI (2008)
• Less than 20% of the SMBs have purchased VoIP Systems
• 1/3 of SMBs are planning to purchase a new phone system in the next 12 months
• 2/3 SMBs are selecting premise based IP PBX solutions rather than hosted but there is growth in both
SMBs, VARs and Open Source
• Whom do SMBs buy their business phone systems from?• Over 65% purchased it from a VAR
• VARs should sell a *total* solution, taking the worry out of the SMB’s objection category:
• Phones, PBX, VoIP/T1 service, networking, network services, etc
• Blur the line between sales & consulting (be consultative)
• You’ll close more sales• Your customers will be happier
• Gartner Group says: – 90% of new businesses in US are SMBs– These SMBs will accelerate adoption of open source– Up to 15% of spending will cannibalize proprietary software market
but it is incremental spending (over next 5 years) 12
SMB Telecom Phone Costs
• Sweet spot of phone systems for SMB:– 97.6 percent is <100 users.
• Top 10 Vertical Markets for sub 100 users:– Finance, Insurance, Wholesale, RE, Mfg, Admin, Health
Care, Trans, Educ, Const, IT, Prof, Sci, Repair, Retail, Hospit, Farming
• Size/Ranges of these SMB Phone Systems:• 3-7 phone lines; • $250-$1250 per month• $3000-$15,000 annually
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SMB factors…..
• SMBs will consider changing to a VoIP system if:– Economics: Maintenance is more expensive than a new system– Support: Old System needs replacing or “End of Life” and no longer
supported– Management: new systems have easier to use tools and better visibility to
the owner– “Change” event: Office Move – Company growth– Features: Owner wants new applications and flexibility
How do SMBs buy their VoIP?
• Most are unsure where to turn• Need “Trusted Advisor”• Today, there is NO #1 brand, it’s splintered • SMBs buy differently than Enterprises; no RFP• Its about SMB owner trust of supplier & implementer• Many SMB owners are hobbyists and/or gadget folks• Decision maker is typically the business owner• Most are not savvy enough to know questions to ask!
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Selling to SMB VoIP customers?
• AMI says 80% of SMBs try to understand the TCO for their potential purchase
• Explain to the SMB owner how the new VoIP system will make life easier
• Explain a few of the many VoIP features that have relevance to their business
SMB VoIP Choices
• There are two basic choices:– Premise based IP PBX: traditional – Hosted PBX: Centrex-style
• There are combinations of above from various channels and suppliers, and some offer both
• Resellers who build and integrate turnkey offers, including services, SIP Trunks or phone trunks (FX0, T1/E1), integrate converged solutions have the advantage since it’s “One throat to choke” and make it easy for the customer.
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Buyer Selection Drivers
• When does premise-based make sense?– Buyer wants ownership and control– Buyer does not trust any phone company/service
provider– Buyer is uncertain of quality of service
• When does hosted make sense?– Buyer does not want to manage the system– Buyer wants ability to modify service with a phone call– Buyer wants to minimize up-front costs– Buyer does not want to pay perpetually
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Basic Feature Sets for SMBs
• The MOST basic features for SMB (from recent interviews with a group of SMB resellers):
– Voice mail – Call Control: Call hold, call transfer, etc– Caller-ID– Conferencing (Audio)– Auto-attendant/IVR – Find me/Follow me– Simultaneous Ring
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Advanced SMB Features
• Performance Monitoring– Call management including concurrent calls, max
number of calls, call flow patterns, bandwidth used
• Cost Control– Call Detail Records (CDR) to analyze costs– Comprehensive Historical reporting and trends– Expense management
• Call Center– Queue management– Call Recording– Supervisor barge-in for monitoring and assistance– Customizable Reporting 20
Advanced SMB Features
• Unified Communications– Web 2.0, web-based tools– Presence – Presence across multiple networks (SMBs use own
network, Skype, Internet, open source Asterisk, soft clients, social networks, Google, etc)
– IM/Chat/Text/Emerging Social Network tools– Integration with CRM– Outlook/Office/Google Integration
• Security– Voice encryption
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Most popular SMB VoIP Capabilities
SMB <100 Employees SMB/SME >100 Employees
Auto Attendant/IVR 1 1
Simultaneous Ring (1) 2 8
Call Center Features 3 6
Find me/follow me 4 5
Unified Communications (2) 5 2
Soft Phone 6 3
Click to Dial 7 9
Office Integration 8 4
Music on Hold 9 7
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1. Office Phone & Mobile Phone, most common2. Voice Mail to Email, most common
Source: Savatar
Unified Communications for SMB
SMB/SME Challenges
SMB <100 Employees SMB/SME >100 Employees
Phone System Costs 12 % 7 %
Features Missing 10 % 7 %
Features Costly 10 % 9 %
Moves/Adds/Changes 9 % 10 %
Billing Accuracy 7 % 10 %
Routing 6 % 6 %
Capacity 5 % 11 %
Multi-site 4 % 9 %
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Source: Savatar
What End Users Ask For
• The solution has to be easy to install, buy and use (No IT Department)
• Complete Solution with Feature Rich Services
• Quick Provisioning Time
• Fully supported if mission critical
SMB Gains Productivity
• Adding more information to your call enriches your productivity
• Customer calls present information to enhance customer service and satisfaction
• Internal calls can do wiki lookup and background of person and display them for immediate access
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SMB Benefits: Gain Productivity
• Recording calls on the fly protects an owners business while ensuring new employees can be trained properly and legal issues can be tracked
• Presence enables more efficient communications
• Simplicity enables the SMB to focus on the business, customer service, and flexibility
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Connecting: Trunking Choices (Trunk=Phone Line=channel)
• What is trunking? It’s the Connection to phone service and phone company.
– Traditional analog (FX0) trunks• SMBs typically buy one phone line for each 5 people, but
minimum of 3: main line, backup line, and fax
– Traditional digital (T1/E1)• 24/30 trunks respectively• Using 5-1 ratio (employees-phone lines), can support
companies over 100-150 people
– IAX (Asterisk)• These are VoIP lines that connect Asterisk Servers
– SIP (Emerging)• Newest Popular VoIP Service • Attend SIP Trunking Seminar here at ITEXPO 28
Resellers Pitfalls
• Our experiences have shown:– Some data VARs over-engineer the solution– This places their quotes higher than the winning VAR– Some Voice VARs understand features, but lack in
depth knowledge of VoIP and data infrastructure– Key system replacement with VoIP tricky
• IP Phones more expensive• IP Applications far exceed KS capabilities
• Why these observations and experiences?– Data engineers want redundancy; fault tolerant– Ideally match the user requirements with the solution– And the budget…..
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End User Pitfalls
• Know your pain points and toleration for key criteria– Features (VoIP SMB Systems near parity with legacy
solutions)– Price (legacy systems cheaper, less flexible)– Technology (Do you care?)– Ownership – hosted or premise based (i.e. want
complete control to add/modify users?);
• Be clear about requirements – Complete Clarity
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In Summary
• VoIP is mainstream today• Price/performance is unparalleled• Resellers are looking for a new offering to address
today’s SMB/SME• If you answer a few simple questions, you should
be able to focus on the right solution – both price points and capabilities.
• Digium is in the Open Source pavilion, stop by and see UC for SMB and why today’s choices are more cost effective than ever before!
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