April 27, 2009
Siemens Sales Strategies For The New UC Markets
By Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View
Siemens Enterprise Communications Group (SEN Group) new executive team discussed how they are addressing the changing needs of the global UC market that will absorb traditional premise-based telephony. As already reflected by competitive announcements from other leading UC technology providers, such as Avaya’s Aura, the Siemens announcement highlighted the need to support existing telephony investments while offering new “open,” IP-based application software for UC.
Key changes in marketing strategies mentioned by CEO James O’Neill and President of Sales Mark Vayda included the following:
- Global approach to sales and marketing
- Exploit “Cloud Computing” – Hosted/Managed services
- Software based, real-time telephony applications expertise
- Targeting key vertical markets such as Government, Health care, Education, Utilities, in major geographical area
- Shift of emphasis to channel-based sales, coupled with strategic direct sales activities
- Channels to include System Integrators, Carriers, VARs, Service Providers, etc.
- Device independence for end users (wired, wireless)
Siemens is aggressively reorganizing its sales and marketing organization with new incentives and new staff to support the shift to software, services, and partnering strategies that UC implementations will require. Both O’Neill and Vayda lay claim to their successful experience in the software and services business with Oracle Corporation.
The challenge of migrating from legacy telephony to UC, IP Telephony, and mobile technologies will be the same for the entire industry, The question is how quickly will the technology and service providers get their acts together and offer flexible and future-proof solutions to meet many different customer needs.
What Do You Think?
Contact me at artr@ix.netcom.com or (310) 395-2360
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