Savecall interviewed by Telecom Handel

Our Managing Director Nikolaus von Johnston was interviewed by Telecom Handel on the subject of All IP and the end of the ISDN era.

The complete interview

The all-IP changeover is creating a gold-rush atmosphere among system houses – at least for now. After the end of the migration, some system house bosses are expecting a dip in sales and are already preparing for new services and business areas. Nikolaus von Johnston, Managing Director of Savecall Telecommunication Consulting in Munich, is one of them.

Savecall originally came from the access sector, now you are transforming yourself into a full-service provider. Is Access sales no longer worthwhile?

Nikolaus von Johnston: Yes, it is still worthwhile – but the margins have of course decreased as prices have fallen. This development was already apparent years ago, which is why we started to include additional services in our range early on.

And what are they?

Johnston: Ultimately, we – together with our partner network – go the whole way with the customer; we are the ones who coordinate more complex projects and hold the reins. One example of this is cloud services; more and more SMEs are outsourcing some of their applications. We advise them on hybrid clouds: which applications should remain in the private cloud and which can be moved to the public cloud? And in the end, we look for suitable partners. We also provide a number of services ourselves; in the cloud area, for example, we provide the appropriate access. We also bought an IT system house a few years ago, making us a full-service provider in the areas of voice, data and IT.

How is the all-IP switchover going, is it also boosting your business?

Johnston: That’s our daily business, we now do it as a matter of routine. Many customers approach us when they have received a letter, and others plan for the longer term and have already prepared for this in advance. We have educated all our customers, provided them with white papers and information and continue to do so. In the beginning, there was – admittedly – a kind of scaremongering in the market, so many customers were unsettled

How is it goingAre there any trends that are emerging among customers? In the course of the migration, there is still the option of keeping an old telecommunications system alive and connecting it to the Next Generation Network via a gateway, or putting communication on a completely new footing … with the All-IP changeover, is that also boosting your business?

Johnston: It varies from case to case, there are still many companies, especially in the SME sector, that continue to use their old telecommunications systems and don’t want to change anything. And if a customer really just wants to make calls without any other applications, then that makes sense. However, we advise customers not to switch from Telekom to another provider just because it still offers ISDN. It’s better to deal with the issue properly from the outset and decide on a solution that will last for the next five years and is correspondingly future-proof.

Because ISDN is a discontinued model?

Johnston: Yes, sooner or later ISDN will disappear from the market for good. It therefore simply doesn’t make sense to switch network providers for a few years during the transition period. However, we realize that collaboration is playing an increasingly important role. However, there is no provider that masters both collaboration and telephony – which is why we are increasingly combining the two worlds for our customers.

On what basis?

Johnston: We ourselves use Skype for Business for collaboration and use telephony via an IP-Centrex solution with interfaces to Microsoft. This turns Skype for Business into a softphone for the IP-Centrex solution with all the usual telephony functions on the market, including the connection to third-party systems such as a CRM system. The collaboration functions – i.e. chat, presence, video conferencing or desktop sharing – are implemented via Skype for Business.

But that causes higher costs …

Johnston: That’s right, including Office 365 we are at around 35 euros per month and workplace. But the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Collaboration is becoming increasingly important, especially when employees work together across locations and companies. It saves an incredible amount of time if an employee can see in advance whether their contact person is available or not – and not just when they receive an autoresponder or leave a voicemail message. And this applies to almost every application. Just like adding the contact person via telephone, video, chat or desktop sharing with just one click of the mouse.

But Microsoft is getting better and better when it comes to telephony. Perhaps at some point the connection to the traditional PBX will become superfluous …

Johnston : The hosted telephony solution integrated into Skype for Business will certainly come from Microsoft. However, I believe it will have its limits in terms of flexibility. For most customers, there will always be a killer function that is missing – and this makes hosted telephony with Skype for Business unattractive for German SMEs. After all, Microsoft develops its solutions for the global market and not for German SMEs. I am therefore convinced that Skype for Business will not be used as a stand-alone solution in these companies in the future either. But I believe that the combination of collaboration functions and Skype for Business as a softphone, with a telephony solution in the background, will become more and more popular. We have introduced this in our own company and more and more of our customers are also opting for this combination. The interview was published in Telecom Handel in August 2017 and was conducted by Waltraud Ritzer. Do you need a non-binding price & provider overview of All IP? Use our online check: