UC Brings Greater Value to SMBs and Enterprises

By Dennis Gatens, Director of Strategy, Enterprise Networks Division, ADTRAN Inc.

As a reseller, you are constantly seeking ways to bring greater value to your SMB and enterprise customers, whether it’s as a turnkey solution provider, a trusted subject-matter expert or through continually evolving and expanding your portfolio. Unified Communications (UC) presents a great opportunity to the channel to deliver real top-line and bottom-line value to the SMB+E. Why? Because you are offering a solution that optimizes business processes through highly integrated communications. The opportunity for the channel is a high-value solution for the SMB+E that includes the sale of not only the solution but also design and maintenance services – resulting in a very sticky relationship. The key to success for the channel is to be able to articulate the solution and the resulting value to the SMB+E.

What is UC for the SMB+E? Gartner in its August 2009 report “Critical Capabilities for Unified Communications” describes the critical capabilities of UC to include: Telephony, Conferencing, Messaging, Presence, Business Enablement through Communications Enabled Business Processes (CEBP) and Consolidated Administration.

For SMB+E customers, the key question is not “What is it?” Rather, it is “What can UC actually do for me and my business?” and “How can UC fit my business, not the other way around?” This message still has to be distilled for the SMB+E to “How UC can increase revenue, lower costs, improve service and increase productivity?” And finally, “How does a UC solution integrate with my existing IT infrastructure and business process applications?” In other words, it means they will not have to rip and replace their IT infrastructure! Connecting these dots for the SMB+E will be the key to success!

UC solutions can scale to deliver value to the small business as well as the largest enterprise. The channel needs to embrace UC solutions and be able to communicate the value to the SMB+E and be able to customize the solution to meet the needs of the SMB+E. I anticipate that the topic of UC will be quite relevant at this spring’s Channel Partners Conference & Expo!

Dennis Gatens is director of strategy, Enterprise Networks Division for ADTRAN Inc., where he is responsible for the development and execution of market, channel and product-focused strategies. He has 25 years of broad experience in enterprise and access communications markets, having held leadership positions in engineering, marketing, product management, sales and business development. Throughout his career, he has brought to market a number of emerging technologies, including custom fiber solutions, xDSL, VoIP and PON. Gatens holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech and a master’s degree in business administration from Radford University. He also is a member of the 2009-10 PHONE+/Channel Partners Conference & Expo Advisory Board.