NEC Unified Solutions President Discusses IP Communications

NEC (News - Alert) Unified Solutions serves as the North American communications integration arm of global giant NEC Corporation for Fortune 1000, as well as small to mid-sized businesses in vertical markets such as hospitality, education, government, and healthcare.

 

As evidenced through their partnerships with companies like Tellme (News - Alert) to offer on-demand voice services, or Juniper Networks to offer unified infrastructure solutions in North America, or via deployments such as the recently announced agreement with Premier Healthcare Alliance, NEC offers customers a complete and varied portfolio for unified communications, wireless, voice, data and managed services.

 

I was fortunate enough to visit with NEC in July of this year, where I learned about their enterprise offerings.

 

Jeff Kane, President of NEC Unified Solutions took the time to respond to a series of questions about the state of the market and current opportunity in unified communications.

 

JK: This has been a challenging year for us, our associates and our customers. Overall, however, we are very excited about our accomplishments, and look forward to building on them.

 

Some of our major accomplishments included the introduction of UNIVERGE360 which focuses on unifying business communications through Role-based communication. To support our UNIVERGE360 approach, we launched a new portfolio which gives us a foundation to support customer needs going forward. In addition, we integrated the resources and capabilities acquired in our purchase of Sphere Communications (News - Alert). NEC Sphericall has given us real momentum as customers move toward services based architectures and integrate the capabilities of Web 2.0 into their business. We also added new partners, such as Juniper, to provide additional products to enhance our solutions.

 

JK: With the introduction of the new portfolio, 85% of what we are shipping is our new products and we have added more than 500 new customers. In addition, we introduced and achieved 500 percent growth in our UC for Business solution for SMBs. Our new products are extremely competitive and selling very well. In fact, we sold our entire initial inventory of the new UNIVERGE SV8500 enterprise communications server just three weeks after it was available.

 

JK: We have always been a leader in vertical solutions and over the next year our customers can expect to see exciting solutions such as vertical applications for our new phones. We are also announcing several new bundles designed to make installation and management of UC even easier. You will also see us continuing our transformation to a communications solutions integrator with a strong portfolio of organic (NEC) and partner solutions.

 

JK: We think IP as a transport protocol is a given. Customers will (and should) adopt it at their own pace and that’s what our solutions allow. In addition, we see more emphasis on enabling capabilities beyond dial-tone through the communications infrastructure. We believe that communications technology will continue to enable mobility and that the roles of people, rather than their devices, will drive the way we communicate in the future.

 

JK: Our Enterprise customers, primarily in vertical markets such as education, healthcare, hospitality and government, have not seen the direct impact by the economy at this point so we are not seeing a significant delay in purchasing. There is certainly more emphasis on cost. This translates to us helping support our customers through building the right solution which meets their unique needs, rather than a “one size fits all” model.

 

For our SMB solutions we’re finding customers aggressively embracing new tools as a means to better manage their business. While customers do not seem inclined to buy “better dial-tone” they are focused on business improvement and business enablement through technology.

 

JK: There are several things that set NEC Unified Solutions apart from the competition. First, we are part of NEC Corporation, a strong $44B global technology company that is known for technology innovation. Secondly, our new IP portfolio, that continues to have a focus on verticals, ranges from servers through terminals and is continuing to sell extremely well. In addition, our large, technically capable channels give us more “feet on the street.” Finally, our leadership in the convergence of IT and communications and our open approach to fitting communications into the software future as a communications solutions integrator sets us apart. With this comprehensive, global approach to integrated communications, NEC gives employees the right tools to succeed.

 

JK: There will be fewer companies able to serve the diverse needs of their customers. NEC’s focus on being a communications solution integrator will help us to aggressively take back market share around the world.

 

The way companies interact with systems will begin to move away from “telephones” to “communications devices” and employees will be empowered by communications versus held back by technology.