Page 5 - Telecom Reseller November December 2015

November/December 2015
Telecom Reseller 5

PERCY
continued from page 1
UNIVERSAL
One issue that was brought up by the readers sponsors, many of them having moved from
relates to jurisdiction and response coordination. “ideas” to “products”. Even the Whitehouse is
GATEWAYS
Is it better for students to contact the university encouraging their development with a Safety
public safety o ce on the mobile app rst?
Datapalooza event.
Or, should they dial 9-1-1 rst? is is an So what are we to make of all this? It’s clear
interesting question that really depends on the from the wide deployment of mobile apps for
PRI/T1, GSM/3G, SIP, FXO-FXS Connectivity
situation at hand. If a student/sta observes public safety, that there is a clear trend to enhance
someone breaking into a car or other petty crime, public safety using mobile apps. It seems to me
the university public safety personnel are a lot that WebRTC is an ideal platform to build these
closer and able to use the on-campus security applications with encryption, delity, voice and
Compatible with any PBX Scalable Conigurations Universal Routing cameras to record the incident and respond fast video along with data channel features. With
Reduce Telecom Cost Free Technical Support 5 Years Warranty
enough to capture the assailant. On the other the increasing concern over our security and the
hand, if the incident is a major re or signi cant technology “in-hand”, this seems like an exciting
crime, the university sta will likely need to market that is sure to continue to grow.
engage and/or coordinate regional o -campus To learn more about Dialogic PowerMedia
Ph: 1-(800)-283-0539, Fax: (888) 717-7472 resources ( re, police, etc). Are students and XMS and how it ts in NG911 and public safety,
Email: sales@matrixhotelpbx.com sta likely to make these decisions correctly? It download the whitepaper e Role of Media
www.matrixhotelpbx.com
seems that the trend is to assume not, and that
Servers in Next Generation 911 from http://
an on-campus public safety coordinator would tinyurl.com/owgspyr ■
be the rst point of contact, allowing them to
coordinate the emergency response needs.
e reliability of mobile apps and the
communications infrastructure also came
into question by a number of readers. Will
the application work when the user needs it?
Let’s just start with the usual mobile device
weaknesses – does a witness’ mobile device have
enough battery life, a cell tower connection and/
or a clear view of the sky to lock on the GPS
satellites to get a good location? We somehow
live through all these issues on a daily basis and
as Sorell Slaymaker noted in his comments “ e
U.S. mobile service providers report that 90% of
enterprise 911 calls are from mobile phones”.
e reliability of apps on mobile devices didn’t
seem to slow down a number of application
developers – last year, the Department of
Homeland Security facilitated a Public Safety &
Emergency Preparedness Hackathon. During
the event, a number of innovative applications
were presented and won awards from various

ZWEIG
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Look at many of the Over-the-Top (OTT)
cloud UC o ers and the rst thing you’ll notice
is that the entire transaction is direct. Plug-
and-play hardware along with well-designed
web administration makes it possible for
customers to install their own phone and
updates. No hardware margins, no professional
services revenue, no maintenance contract. At
best you may get called for some cabling and
an inexpensive PoE switch installation. e
customer that used to call you to add a phone is
now lling out an online form and getting their
new phone drop-shipped.

Act Now, Don’t Lose Your Installed Base
It’s not all doom in gloom though. Today you
still own the customer relationship and while
customers may like the price of a do-it-yourself
phone system, many won’t like the hidden cost of
troubleshooting issues or adding new employees.
e real challenge is to be ready to compete on
a new playing eld. ere are a number of cloud
UC services that are VAR friendly. e key is to
proactively start to change your business now
before your customers start shopping your cloud
competition.

Finding a Cloud Service You Can Trust
It may not be easy to decide who to partner with.
A nice website might be alluring, but you should
pay attention to the scale and experience of your
cloud partner. Is their cloud carrier-grade? Is it
a multi-tenant, geo-redundant solution or a few
freeware PBXs in a data center? e good news is
that you can try before you resell. Make your own
business the rst customer. Nothing will give
your sales and services teams more con dence
than seeing a new solution work for themselves.
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