Service Providers (especially traditional Telcos and MSOs) understand they need to modernize their voice & communications offerings to remain competitive in the market. Without significant investment in features and functionality from their incumbent voice platform vendors, some have turned to cloud-based partnerships with name brand retail providers to “resell” UCaaS and CCaaS offers into their SMB and Mid-Market customer base. We’ve covered the customer disintermediation and margin issues that come along with those partnerships in a previous post (“Beware of Your OTT Frenemies”), but where does this leave the Service Providers existing infrastructure once net-new sales start flowing into the partner based product set? Just because you’ve added a new retail UCaaS offer to your portfolio doesn’t mean you are just going to stop delivering your traditional voice services overnight.
That “fixed cost” voice network that they’ve leveraged for decades is STILL THERE! But as the ice cube melts on legacy voice services revenue or customers are migrated over to the partner’s retail solution, the cost to maintain the legacy network in relation to revenue is out of alignment.
If you’re a service provider looking to modernize, finding a partner that can support all the traditional voice use cases with a modern cloud platform is critical, especially if you want to power down the legacy network architecture. You are going to need a “full stack” cloud communications platform.
Alianza’s full stack platform provides comprehensive coverage of the six core voice use cases (while also delivering a robust innovation and growth roadmap). Those six use cases are:
- Residential Lines: For residential customers, Alianza’s cloud-based platform ensures high quality voice services that cater to the segment of the population that still wants a reliable and easy to use “landline” at home. While many homes have cut the cord and gone mobile, there are still millions of residential lines deployed that need to be served, even when the legacy voice switches are removed from the Service Providers network.
- Analog Business Lines: Many businesses still rely on simple analog voice lines for their day-to-day communications needs. Not every end business needs a full Cloud PBX or UCaaS offer, and, in these situations, basic business lines fit the bill
- Specialty Lines: There are millions of systems deployed out there that still require traditional analog “voice” connectivity, including fax lines, burglar and fire alarm systems, Point-of- Sale systems, and elevator lines. Alianza supports these critical services with a POTS replacement solution called Specialty Lines, which includes specialized CPE with redundant power and connectivity options, plus full on-site deployment options to handle the complex re-wiring that these solutions require.
- SIP Trunking: While of course many businesses are ditching their on prem PBX systems, the fact is that there are still millions of them in service and they still all need their PSTN connectivity and other cloud-based features like network based IVRs.
- Hosted PBX: Hosted PBX style voice services remain a popular choice for voice centric businesses, and many of the existing UC oriented services don’t offer a voice only solution.
- UCaaS: Finally, there is of course significant demand for full Unified Communications solutions that combine voice calling, office messaging and video collaboration.
The Alianza cloud communications platform delivers on every one of these six key use cases, making us a great, “full stack” solution for Service Providers looking to eliminate legacy infrastructure (like Metaswitch, BroadWorks, Genband or even dusty old TDM switches). We are not just another UC solution to add on top of your current set of communications services, we are a full voice transformation and migration solution, and so much more.
Now I will say that if these six key voice uses cases were all we delivered then this story might be kind of boring. Just replacing voice services like-for-like and delivering them from the cloud in a SaaS based model does not make a compelling offer. But there is more to this full stack story, including our Microsoft Teams integration capabilities, Cloud Contact Center (CCaaS), and Business Text Messaging. With these additional capabilities Service Providers have the opportunity to migrate their entire voice portfolio while reclaiming space and power in their datacenters, well positioning them to grow revenue with high-margin, innovative solutions fully delivered under their own brand.
In the dynamic and rapidly evolving world of telecommunications, staying ahead means balancing innovation and future demands while maintaining reliable, existing services. Take, for example the recent end-of-life notice for MaX UC and the subsequent mass layoffs for a huge chunk of the Metaswitch folks inside of Microsoft. These announcements mean that service providers, and specifically those that have relied on Metaswitch, must choose a new path modernize their infrastructure. However, this modernization cannot come at the cost of abandoning core offerings.
The time is now for service providers to begin developing a plan and determining the path forward for their voice services. Alianza’s full stack offerings are built on a scalable cloud-native platform, helping service providers grow revenue, reduce complexity, mitigate risk and deliver better end-user customer experiences.
Reach out to our team to learn more about why Alianza is the ideal partner for navigating the future of telecommunications and how you can get started.
