Since the Cisco-BSFT deal, the channel media have been reporting that cloud has won and on-premise is dead.
There are no real indications that on-premise is dead. It isn’t growing, but it isn’t dead.
Avaya will be coming out of BK. Shoretel-Mitel will still be selling PBX. NEC, Zultys, Digium, 3CX, FreePBX/Sangoma, FreeSwitch are just a few of the names that are still being installed in the SMB space.
Windstream still offers Avaya, Mitel, Shoretel and Allworx boxes.
I get that the master agencies are wishful thinking that UCaaS will take off, but it has been slow going.
Nextiva just announced that they are going beyond VoIP. Evolve IP, PBX-Change and other BSFT customers have stopped being a stand-alone Hosted PBX shop for a while. IaaS, Managed IT, DaaS, DRaaS, Email and more have been added to the catalog to increase ARPU, steal more wallet share and make the customer sticky. And make the sale easier because just offering Cloud Comms is NOT an easy sale.
Also, if it was all cloud, wouldn’t Cisco have put an end of life on Call Manager?
If it was the end of on-premise, would partners still be hosting Exchange, Lync, Office365 and more for their customers?
If it was the end of on-prem, would surveys like this one show these results?
“Although cloud services have gone mainstream, some entrepreneurs and SMBs still have lingering concerns about SaaS and other on-demand IT services. Indeed,”
21 percent said cost was a barrier to implementing a cloud-based solution;
53 percent said security was an issue; and
46 percent named workflow disruption as a problem.
[source]
I’m not saying cloud isn’t winning, but I am saying when you hear HYBRID it is because businesses are choosing some on-prem, some public cloud (SaaS or IaaS) and some private cloud, which can mean their own NOC or managed hosting or outsourced VMs. There is no one size fits all. Some applications cannot port to cloud. Some apps will not move off company owned gear. Talk to enough CIOs and you will hear the wariness of cloud.
We have hacks every day. There are cloud providers going insolvent. There is a lot of uncertainty of what each provider means by cloud. Is it just hosted? Is it redundant and resilient? Is it backed up? Is it secure? How secure? Is it compliant? Is there validated uptime?
To make a blanket statement that On-Prem is dead, it makes me think you are navel gazing.
SIDE NOTE:
The survey demonstrates what I have said previously: “46 percent named workflow disruption as a problem”. This means that cloud sales should be about Change. Changing workflow, changing the way business does business. But it isn’t sold that way. And most people hate change. You are selling against the grain. People mainly buy to remove pain. It’s a dilemma.
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