Voicespan

Interesting news over at bMighty.com

Back when Microsoft announced that it was entering the SME VoIP market with the Response Point product, I will admit to a shiver of apprehension. The mighty Microsoft machine has more than once entered a market, grabbed significant market share, and through tight integration with Windows and/or Office, made its product the de-facto choice.

So why hasn’t that worked this time? Difficult to say at the moment as there is not an awful lot of information on the Response Point blog, but it’s obvious that market share targets haven’t been achieved. If I was to speculate, I would guess that potential customers do not see the right answers when considering a Microsoft PBX. After all, what are the most important features of your phone system?

• It works…every time
• It has essential functionality (call hold, transfer, conference, voicemail, IVR, etc)
• It is easy to change as the company changes
• It works…every time
• It enables new working practices, such as home working
• It works…OK, you get the picture

No I’m not insinuating that the MS product didn’t do all this, and probably more. But public perception is a difficult thing to change, and I would wager that the majority of SME IT managers are happy to have MS software on their desktops and network, where failure is an inconvenience rather than a disaster. But start putting Microsoft and PBX into the same sentence and they’ll start squirming a little and glancing at the door. The perception is that more ‘stable’ OS’s than Windows should be at the core of their telephony switch.

Of course, it doesn’t help that Asterisk is doing quite well in the SME market, thank you very much, and every IT Manager will enjoy turning round to the MD and saying ‘Licence fees? Nope, don’t need them at all!’