Last week, Cisco Capital announced a financing solution that created a brand new Hardware as a Service (HAAS) business model for Cisco Partners seeking to sell Cisco Unified Communications solutions to small and midsize businesses.
Previously, Cisco tried to get into the SMB telephony market with Linksys One.
That huge initiative appears to have failed.
Where can I buy it?
Where are the partners?
What happened to this huge Cisco initiative?
My guess?
It's dead.
So perhaps the Cisco Hardware as a Service (HAAS) business model is the last hope Cisco has to get their expensive unified communications stuff affordable enough for the small portion of the SMB market.
Keep in mind that this market is a game worth playing for Cisco:
$7 billion USA PBX space.
$20 billion Global PBX space.
Thrashing the new Cisco HAAS business model, Fonality has introduced Cisco functionality at scandalously low prices.
Fonality's new phone system release, PBXtra 4.0, has pulverized the pricing of the new Cisco HAAS business model:
| Fonality 73 User System - Cheaper Phones | |
| Users | 73 |
| Server + Software | $995 |
| Phone + Phone Prov. Fee | $164 |
| HUD Pro | $995 |
| Fonality Total Over 4 Years | $13,962.00 |
| Cisco HAAS 73 User System | |
| Users | 73 |
| Cost Per Day | $1.15 |
| Days in Year | 365 |
| Years | 4 |
| Cisco Total Over 4 Years | $122,567.00 |
Now, if Fonality went hog wild and gave customers amazing phones:
That is better than Cisco phones, the $164 would change to $290
So the total Fonality price would rise from $13,962 to $23,160
Even so, the top Fonality solution is almost $100K cheaper than Cisco.
| Fonality 73 User System - Awesome Phones | |
| Users | 73 |
| Server + Software | $995 |
| Phone + Phone Prov. Fee | $290 |
| HUD Pro | $995 |
| Fonality Total Over 4 Years | $23,160.00 |
Competitive Price Analysis: talkswitch - 3Com - Avaya
View more Fonality Pricing!
 "The next evolution of this space, is where your phone system uses artificial intelligence to figure out what the best way is to find you, vs. just ringing a dumb device," said Chris Lyman - CEO/CTO of Fonality.
"This is the approach that Fonality is taking with PBXtra 4.0." "We use a series of methods, such as keyboard and mouse activity, to figure out if you are at your desk. If you aren’t, we send the call to your cell phone." |
PBXtra 4.0 includes FindMe with Boomerang Mobile Integration:
This new features use presence detection to automatically find employees on their mobile devices, allowing them to answer the call or bounce it to another extension.
The new FindMe capability in PBXtra 4.0 ups the ante in the Find-Me-Follow-Me feature wars.
Not only does it allow employees to decide when and how they will be found according to their personal schedule and rules, but FindMe also has built-in presence detection.
The system observes a person’s keyboard and mouse activity and can route calls to their mobile phone or other number when they are inactive on their computer.
 Boomerang Mobile Integration deepens Fonality’s commitment toward unifying the PC, the desk phone and the mobile phone.
It allows calls sent to mobile phones to be boomeranged back to any extension by pressing a few keys on the mobile phone. Boomeranged calls can also be recorded from a mobile phone and automatically stored on the PBXtra server. |
FONcall is a new PBXtra plug-in for the Firefox web browser and is the first one-click dialing application for business telephony.
It turns a phone number on any site into a link.
By clicking the link, PBXtra will automatically take an Aastra and Polycom phone off the hook and dial out to the number hands-free.
PBXtra 4.0 also deepens branch office integration by merging spell-by-name directories, allowing callers to dial into one branch and find an employee at any other branch anywhere in the world.
PBXtra 4.0 contains significant enhancements for Fonality’s growing reseller base.
A consolidated interface allows resellers to manage all of their PBXtra customers from a single Web-based administration interface, with hot switching between installations.
A new network card configuration option allows for custom configuration of analog and PRI and T1 cards.
New alerts are now available so resellers can receive email to text messages when issues arise with a PRI, RAID disk, analog line voltage, and a host of other indicators.
Country support has also been added so administrators can set a server to the host country it is located in, and PBXtra will automatically configure the relevant telecom settings.
Used by over 5,000 companies and 1,000,000 end users in 100 countries, Fonality's award winning IP-PBX VoIP phone systems have connected more than 225,000,000 mission critical phone calls.
By the way, Fonality CEO - Chris Lyman has impressed yours truly during our personal interactions!
About Brad Reese on Cisco
Brad Reese is research manager at BradReese.Com, advancing the careers of 1 million certified individuals in the growing Cisco Career Certification Program.
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