Rating the Vendors: TEQConsult Group's Consultant SurveyRating the Vendors: TEQConsult Group's Consultant Survey

The consultants gave thumbs up to Avaya and other leading vendors, thumbs down to CaaS, cloud and open source.

The annual TEQConsult Group consultant survey results are in. The survey questionnaires were distributed to consultant members of the Society of Telecommunications Consultants (STC) and Canadian Telecommunications Consultants Association (CTCA). There were a total of 68 responses, though respondents did not address every survey question.

Several of the final results presented in this article are based on weighted response ratings, similar to last year. Response grades, when applicable, were weighted according to the following scale: Weak = 0; Fair = 2; Good = 5; Excellent = 9. Point totals were added and divided by the total number of responses, excluding No Answer (N/A) responses. The same weights were also used for survey results in which the available responses were Not Likely (0), Somewhat Likely (2), Fairly Likely (5) and Highly Likely (9). The highest potential weighted grade was a 9, but virtually no weighted grade for any question was even close to this maximum due to a distribution of responses.

Some may argue that the survey results (and weighting system) are not based on a solid statistical foundation, and this may in fact be true, based on the size of the consultant sample. In defense of the survey results I wish to state two important points:

1. The respondents to the survey are professionals strongly committed to the telecommunications market by the fact they are dues-paying members of a professional industry organization that stresses independence and a high standard of ethics. I recommend readers to review the STC's stringent Code of Ethics. On the whole, their primary clientele are end user customers, not systems suppliers with ongoing fiduciary relationships.

2. The industry knowledge and experience of the responding consultants is highly impressive. The following chart illustrates the years of industry experience for the responding consultants based on a survey question (Chart 1). Many have two decades or more industry experience as a professional consultant working closely with clients analyzing, selecting, and installing products and solutions being evaluated by the survey. They are field tested working on the frontlines--not merely sitting at a desk analyzing product brochures--with personal knowledge of the products and solutions they are grading.

I hope that the consultant responses will be given the respect and recognition they deserve, at least on par with those of well known market research/analysis organizations. Writing as a telecommunications consultant and market/product analyst with more than 30 years' market experience who has achieved some degree of industry recognition, I know that my work as a consultant to end user organizations has greatly complemented and enriched my role as an analyst.

And now on to the survey results.

Vendor Overall Communications Portfolio
The consultants were asked to rate each listed vendor's overall communications system portfolio, including the core telephony system and all related peripheral products and/or applications (see Chart 2). The clear winner for this question was Avaya, who received a significantly higher percent of Excellent grades (67%) than the second ranked competitor Cisco (38%) or anyone else.

It appears that Nortel's non-product problems affected this year's consultant grades. Though it was not surprising that the six vendors with the largest installed customer bases in North America received overall strong positive grades, ShoreTel and Interactive grades were only slightly behind the leaders despite more limited product portfolios. More than half of the surveyed consultants did not provide responses for Aastra (51%) or Digium (69%), indicating that these companies need to improve their communications to the consultants. Toshiba also received a high percent (47%) of no-responses to the question, probably due to its focus in the Small/Medium Enterprise (SME) market segment.

In my opinion, Alcatel should have received a higher grade than it did, commensurate with its ranking among the global market leaders, though its poor marketing and lackluster sales results in North America are likely to blame for the less than satisfactory survey results. The Aastra grades also don't adequately reflect their portfolio strengths, including the products and solutions acquired from Ericsson. I'm sure Digium disagrees with its results, but should take this as a sign that it needs to interact with consultants to a much greater degree than it has, if it wants to play with the big boys in the market.

IP Telephony System
The next question focused on the core IP communications system. Given the previous question, there was little surprise that Avaya received the strongest grades (see Chart 3). Avaya had twice the number of Excellent grades of any other vendor, and only one consultant rated them less than Good. Among the runners-up, Mitel, Siemens, and Cisco were tightly grouped, as were Interactive, NEC, Alcatel, and Nortel. At least one third of the consultants did not provide a response for Alcatel (34%), Aastra (50%), Digium (71%), Interactive (43%) or Toshiba (48%), which says something about their market positioning with the survey sample.

I don't disagree with Avaya's leading ranking (especially since its Aura virtualization platform eliminated the need for too many peripheral servers for core system functions), but the difference between its IP telephony system offering and several of the competitive offerings is not as substantial as the survey results may imply. Many IP telephony systems have a few competitive strong points to recommend them based on individual customer requirements. Just so Avaya doesn't get too swelled a head about its top grade, I offer a comment from one of the consultants: "Avaya has so many options that the AE has trouble deciding what to propose and we have trouble keeping up with what is the offering now."

I think that Cisco deserves a lot of credit for its current ranking, because five years ago it would have received a far worse grade while it was still ironing out some major system design bugs and running on a Windows operating system platform. Also note that Alcatel's grade for its core system was a distinct improvement over its overall portfolio grade. Nortel's grade declined from last year despite some significant improvements in its CS1000 design, including a much improved hardware migration option for Meridian 1 customers.

The survey also shows that Interactive's Enterprise Interaction Center (EIC) product rates well with consultants, though the company's promotional activities for its almost identically-designed contact center solution has greatly overshadowed it in the past. Last but not least, the Digium offering is probably not as bad as the survey grade implies.

IP Telephones
The survey question about the IP telephone instruments could be perceived as a trick question for some of the listed vendors (Digium and Interactive), because they use third party SIP terminals. Nevertheless, there were two distinct leaders in this category, Avaya and Mitel (see Chart 4). The Avaya instruments are designed to optimize user interaction, with the display field for feature/function implementation, and are available with a wide range of enhanced capabilities. So too the Mitel telephones, especially for models with a significant number of programmable line/feature keys combined with a large display field--these are very comforting to the more mature station user who appreciates the traditional method of one-button feature access/speed dialing.

Cisco received good grades, but it might have been higher if consultants had sufficient time to consider the new 8900/9900 models announced just two months ago. Looking at the results (Chart 4), one immediately notices that there was a distinct difference in grades between the first six vendors and the latter six. Once again, a large percent of consultants failed to provide a response for Alcatel (40%), Aastra (53%), Digium (73%), Interactive (50%) or Toshiba (40%).

I believe that two of the vendors did not receive sufficient recognition from the consultants for their IP telephone portfolios: NEC and Siemens. The highly modular design attributes of the NEC instruments are unique in the industry (and also a major plus for customers); the mid-high level Siemens OpenStage models lack for nothing in advanced telephone features and functions, and recent price cuts make them very attractive offerings. Alcatel's grades in this category, though, are more deserved, because their phone portfolio is aging and in need of an overhaul.

Contact Center
This survey question had perhaps the least surprising result of the entire survey, because Avaya's contact center market strength was reflected in its very (very) high grade compared to the other top tier enterprise communications system suppliers (see Chart 5). Of note is that more than 90% of Avaya’s given grades for this question were Excellent, the remainder Good. Avaya's reputation as the contact center market leader is significantly substantiated by the survey of those who know the ins and outs of products beyond brochures and documentation guides. Congratulations to Avaya for this singular achievement.

Interactive also received a very good grade, as it should in a product category for which it has made its reputation. Almost 75% of Interactive's grades in this category were Excellent, the remainder were Good (except for one Fair), cementing the supplier's position as a top tier contact center player despite its relatively small corporate size compared to most of its strategic competitors.

No one else came close to matching the top two in terms of consultant grades. Siemens and Alcatel were the closely graded runner-ups, though I would have expected the latter to rate higher due to its Genesys offerings. Though Siemens' North American market share has slipped during the past few years, it's good to see that the consultants still recognize a strong offering when they see it. Cisco's mediocre grade should not have been a surprise, because it was similar to last year's result. Despite strong Cisco CLP efforts to better educate the consultants about their contact center offerings, the respondents continue to have issues that need to be addressed by design and feature improvements.

Messaging
Avaya, again, received the highest grades for its messaging system portfolio, but six others also received mostly positive grades (a weighted average of at least 5) from the consultants (see Chart 6). Siemens made a strong showing in this product/application category, a fitting result since its Rolm ancestor was the first PBX system supplier to introduce its own voice mail system during the very early days of the market.

I believe the value and market status of voice messaging systems was best summarized by one consultant's comment that it "is no longer a deciding factor when choosing systems. All manufacturers have generally well designed and reliable messaging systems."

Unified Communications
Unified Communications is not a term I enjoy using, but it has been a popular catch-all phrase that most consultants understand to some degree. Cisco received the highest weighted grade in the first consultant survey two years ago, but Avaya has since edged ahead for this question (see Chart 7). All but three consultants rated Avaya UC as Excellent or Good (evenly divided between the two grades), easily the best showing of any of the 12 vendors. Cisco may have received a better grade had its early November Collaboration kick-off, with several new and exciting offers, been earlier in the year and the consultants had had sufficient time to absorb what was announced. I would personally rank Cisco ahead of Avaya at the current time based on the recent announcement.

At the same time, I would also elevate Siemens, a strong third place finisher in this category, ahead of Avaya based on the strength of its OpenScape platform. That said, Avaya has some new UC-type offers in development that should certainly help keep its ranking high when next year's survey is conducted.

Other vendors with positive grades for UC were Interactive, Mitel and NEC. Alcatel should have received better grades, but consultant unfamiliarity with the French firm's UC offerings likely affected the results.

Mobile Communications
Avaya, once again, had the highest grade for another product/application category, mobile communications solutions, by a comfortable margin. More than half of the consultants grading Avaya for this question gave the vendor an Excellent, a percent far greater than any other competitor (see Chart 8).

Following Avaya were Siemens, Cisco, NEC, and Mitel, closely bunched together based on their total weighted grades resulting in a better than Good overall rating. Excluding Nortel, each of the other listed vendors received a high percent (at least 45%) of No Answer grades from the consultants for this question, indicating low consultant awareness of and/or familiarity with their offerings.

Many in the industry are predicting a market trend of increased mobile communications utilizing smartphones that work behind the enterprise communications. But in this survey, one consultant commented that "none of these [vendor] companies have embraced the smart phone on the public networks as the primary enterprise user end-point."

Pricing
Finally, we have a category for which Avaya did not receive the highest grade. Mitel was the clear winner for its overall pricing strategies/tactics with mostly positive (Excellent or Good) grades from the consultants (see Chart 9). Digium's weighted grade was also strong, but it was based on only 12 total consultant responses (about one quarter the number for Mitel). It's also worth noting that Toshiba received its highest survey grade for this question.

Though Avaya and Cisco received the best overall product/application grades for the various questions, they slumped appreciably when it came to pricing. Cisco received a Weak rating from more than 20% of the responding consultants to this question, a much higher percent than any of the other vendors. The results for this question were the lowest grades for the 12 vendors in the survey, indicating that consultants perceive current market prices to be too high or the vendor strategies and tactics confusing. Constantly changing pricing policies by the vendors in setting list prices and bundled offerings, and the dealers who are bidding the solutions on the street, are hard to follow and fully understand.

Consultant Recommendations
The next two survey questions went straight to the heart of the matter: Whether a consultant would recommend a particular vendor's offering to a client during the upcoming year. As regards an IP telephony system, the results closely followed most of the previous results, with Avaya receiving a very high percent (about 85%) of positive ("Highly Likely" and "Fairly Likely") grades; no consultant said he/she was "Not Likely" to recommend an Avaya IP telephony system to a client--a claim no other vendor in the survey list can make. Avaya was also the only vendor to receive a "Highly Likely" grade from more than half (about 60%) of the responding consultants for this question. The New Jersey-based vendor was the clear winner for this vital question, and though its actual market share trails Cisco according to shipment numbers, they appear to be the favorite among consultants (see Chart 10).

Cisco and Mitel also received strong grades for this question, closely followed by NEC. Siemens, ShoreTel and Interactive also received mostly positive grades, though a fair number of their grades (at least one third) were either "Not Likely" or "Somewhat Likely." The remaining vendors did not score as well from responding consultants, each receiving a "Not Likely" grade from at least one quarter of the respondents.

Avaya scored an even more impressive win when consultants were asked about contact center recommendations. Avaya's grades regarding a recommendation were slightly stronger as compared to the earlier contact center question (see Chart 5). About three of four responding consultants would be "Highly Likely" to recommend an Avaya contact center according to the survey, by far the strongest response from the consultants by a wide margin. Avaya did not receive a single "Not Likely" response, again the only vendor that could make this claim. The other vendor receiving very strong positive grades was Interactive, befitting its earlier contact center portfolio grade (see Chart 11).

Siemens and Mitel grades were mostly positive for this question, but not in the same league as Avaya and Interactive. Cisco received grades fairly distributed across the four recommendation categories, though the number of less favorable grades ("Not Likely" and "Somewhat Likely") slightly outnumbered the more positive grades. Interestingly, Cisco received more than double the number of "Highly Likely" grades that NEC had, but the latter's overall weighted grade was slightly better. The lesson that Alcatel, the next highest ranked vendor, should learn from the survey is that product capabilities are secondary to many other factors when it comes to consultant recommendations.

The Nortel Issue
Readers will notice that Nortel was not included in the preceding two questions, because it has ceased to exist as an enterprise communications supplier. The Avaya acquisition of Nortel ES was finalized last month, but the communications system offerings will live on (for the time being) under new ownership. I thought it would be interesting to ask the consultants their recommendation position on Nortel-based products if the client was either an old Nortel account or a non-Nortel account.

Either way the results will not make the new owners or Nortel dealers happy, because consultants will not be disposed to recommend a Nortel-based IP telephony system or contact center (see Charts 12 and 13). For non-Nortel customers the lopsided results are not unexpected (89% "Not Likely;" 6% "Somewhat Likely;" 5% "Fairly Likely;" and zero percent "Highly Likely"). For Nortel accounts the results are only a little better, but not encouraging, because only 12% of consultants would be "Highly Likely" or "Fairly Likely" to recommend a Nortel-based offering to a Nortel account. This does not bode well for Avaya to retain Nortel accounts and stop the hemorrhaging of the installed base that took place the past few years.

I personally would recommend a client carefully consider upgrading an existing Meridian 1 to a CS 1000 as an option, because the economics would likely be very favorable compared to a swap-and-replace with a new system. I don't believe the Avaya product roadmap, scheduled to be announced later this month, will call for terminating the CS 1000 anytime soon, because it is the migration vehicle for the very large installed base of Meridian 1 customers who have remained loyal to Nortel and the product. I would, however, not recommend a CS 1000 to a non-Nortel account, agreeing with the overwhelming majority of consultants responding to the survey.

Regarding a contact center situation, unless a customer is only considering an update to an installed Nortel solution, I would definitely not recommend a new Nortel-based offering to anyone (Nortel or non-Nortel account). I believe that the future of Nortel-based contact center solutions is in greater jeopardy when the Avaya roadmap is announced.

What About Microsoft?
The next two survey questions were focused on Microsoft. The first question asked the consultants to rate their knowledge of the OCS 2007 solution and the results are a notice to Microsoft that a strong education effort will be needed in the next year or two. A significant percent (62%) of the respondents rated their knowledge level "Weak" or "Fair" (see Chart 14). Microsoft currently has a consultant support program in place, formally launched about six months ago, but open to a very limited number of invited participants to help the effort get off the ground. Microsoft will be expanding the program as the OCS 2007 solution becomes a more viable PBX system replacement following upcoming upgrade releases. I believe that a sizable number of the respondents who rated their knowledge as "Good" or "Excellent" are among the early program members. It will take time for the general consultant community to become familiar and comfortable with the relatively new product offering, especially one with a system design platform and features/functions somewhat unique compared to more traditional IP telephony systems.

The next Microsoft question asked consultants to rate the likelihood Microsoft will become a leading (Top 5) North American market competitor for enterprise communications systems. The results were mixed, because the number of consultants who voted "Not Likely" were the same as those who voted "Highly Likely," about one-sixth of total responses for each likelihood (see Chart 15). For those in the middle, "Somewhat Likely" responses outnumbered the more positive "Fairly Likely" responses.

I believe the survey results are a good reflection of the views of the general market, because Microsoft has a strong opportunity to become a leading competitor, but nothing is guaranteed. Microsoft certainly has the resources and motivation to follow in Cisco's footsteps as an industry outsider who makes good, but whether market success comes quickly or slowly will be determined by many factors that are currently difficult to predict and assess. It should be pointed out that Microsoft need only attain a few market share points to crack the Top 5 in North America based on current conditions, and I think that this is eminently doable by 2015.

Next year's survey will most likely include a question asking consultants if they would recommend the Microsoft OCS 2007 solution as a voice enterprise communications offering to a client. The results of this question would be most interesting a year from now.

Cloud and Open Source Recommendations
The next two questions asked consultants if they would recommend a hosted Communications as a Service (CaaS) or open source software solution to their large enterprise clients during the next year, as opposed to a more traditional IP telephony system. Neither non-traditional offering received strong support from the consultants, though CaaS fared better (see Chart 16). Only a few percent of consultants were "Highly Likely" to recommend a CaaS solution, while 45% were "Not Likely" and 41% were "Somewhat Likely." A resounding 89% of consultant responses were "Not Likely" to recommend an open source solution and not a single consultant was "Highly Likely" to recommend it (see Chart 17).

The CaaS and open source results are good reflections of current market conditions, because most activity for these options is centered in the small systems market segment. Few large customer installations at the current time are either CaaS or open source solutions. If vendors/sellers of either solution plan to make stronger in-roads to the large systems market, the survey indicates that stronger consultant marketing efforts may be required.

I believe a follow-up survey is warranted to better understand the reluctance of consultants to recommend a CaaS or open source solution to large enterprise customers. As regards CaaS, it may be concerns over the viability of the seller (many are not large, well-financed operations) or security issues (something typically mentioned in connection with third party off-site offerings).

As regards an open source solution, the grades that Digium received in the survey indicate that consultants are not highly impressed and/or knowledgeable with the vendor's offerings. I doubt that consultants would rate other less well known open source solutions any better, and would likely rate them lower.

Death of the Desktop Telephone Instrument?
I thought it would be interesting to have the consultants' take on the future of the desktop telephone instrument, a prominent and recurring No Jitter and VoiceCon subject matter. It appears that a majority of consultants believe that soft phones and/or mobile communications devices will supplant desktop telephone instruments as the primary user interface to the enterprise communications during the next 10 years (see Chart 18), because more than one third believe it to be "Highly Likely" and about one quarter believe it to be "Fairly Likely." Slightly less than one quarter consider it "Somewhat Likely" that desktop telephone instruments will be replaced and about one-sixth believe it "Not Likely" at all.

Recognize that the question does not ask if the desktop telephone instrument will disappear, but merely experience a drop in usage and stature. I don't know if some of the responding consultants were influenced by my presentation at the STC Fall 2009 Conference that implied such an outcome, but the results don't bode well for the future of traditional telephones if consultants increasingly recommend to their clients alternative communications interface options.

What About Google?
There is no longer any doubt that Microsoft is attempting to be an enterprise communications market player, but what about Google? The consultant response: 26% believe it "Highly Likely" Google will be a market competitor via a CaaS offering within five years, a mere 3% (two consultants, only) replied "Not Likely" and the remainder relatively split between "Fairly Likely" and "Somewhat Likely" (see Chart 19).

Google is already in the voice communications market through its Google Voice service and Android operating system for mobile smart phones, and there are rumors that they may announce their own self-labeled handset sometime soon. Most of the current competitors seem to believe there is a good chance Google is considering a move into the market. To ignore the possibility is not an option, because Google is like an 800-pound gorilla sitting in the back of the room.

The Current Hot Feature/Function
The final question of the survey asked the consultants to select the "hottest" features/functions for the upcoming year from a list of five options. SIP trunk services was the clear winner with half of the responding consultant votes (see Chart 20). Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) and UC came in second and third, respectively, with modest support from the consultants.

Communications Enabled Business Process (CEBP) and telepresence-quality video conferencing received little support in the survey, with a handful of votes for each. SIP trunk services offer customer hard cost savings compared to the other feature/functions that cannot be as accurately measured and monitored.

Consultant Liaison Programs
The consultants were asked to evaluate (Weak, Fair, Good, Excellent) the Consultant Liaison Programs (CLPs) of the leading enterprise communications system suppliers, but if no formal program existed, then overall consultant support (see Chart 21). This year's results were in line with last year's results as the NEC CLP received the best overall grades and the highest percent of Excellent responses.

The other vendors receiving mostly strongly positive grades (Excellent and Good) were Cisco Systems, Mitel Networks, Avaya, Siemens Enterprise Communications, Interactive Intelligence, and Nortel. Mitel was the only vendor to avoid receiving a single Weak grade from a consultant. Nortel's grade slipped significantly from last year, owing to the bankruptcy difficulties the vendor has been through the past year and major cutbacks in CLP resources (personnel and budget).

Excluding Interactive (a 70% response rate), the leading vendors received grades from about 80% to 90% of total survey respondents. Alcatel-Lucent and ShoreTel each had about a 75% response rate. At the low end Digium received a grade from about a third of the consultants and the lowest weighted grade for the question. Digium would probably receive more positive feedback if it had a formal CLP like each of the other vendors covered by the survey.

I don't have any strong disagreements with the survey results, though I would personally give Nortel a stronger grade than the weighted result reflects. I think that Cisco's program was at least the equal of NEC's, with Avaya very close behind. Please note that the Avaya and Nortel CLPs have merged following the recently closed Nortel ES acquisition. The program members will most certainly have a busy year as I am sure consultants will have many questions and needs following the Avaya/Nortel product roadmap announcement, which is scheduled for later this month.

The consultants were also asked to evaluate (Weak, Fair, Good, Excellent) their personal working relationships with the vendor CLPs. The rankings of the vendors closely correlated with the results of the previous question (see Chart 22), though the grades were generally higher. For this question Siemens ranked second behind NEC, moving up from the overall CLP ranking. Also please note the much improved grade for Nortel compared to the overall CLP performance result.

The next survey question was to gauge consultant opinion regarding the overall state of today's consultant programs compared to that of 10 years ago. If anyone has read the earlier No Jitter article I wrote, the result should be of no surprise (see Chart 23). Almost two thirds of the respondents believe that CLP quality has worsened in the past decade compared to about a quarter who believe that it has improved. Though CLP websites have greatly helped disseminate information about products and solutions, consultants see declining face-to-face contact (roadshows, meetings) as a problem issue. One consultant comment is of particular note: "There is a missing knowledge of how to provide support services that would show its products as reliable, sellable, and client centered (for client's IT support staff as well as the end user)." A specific question addressed to those consultants who believe the state of CLPs has worsened was included (see Chart 24). Given survey question choices, budget cutbacks and program downsizing were the leading reasons selected for the decline, according to the responses. As I have written extensively on this topic, no further comments are necessary.