6 Reasons Every MSP Should Sell VoIP

By David Phillips, President, St. Louis IT Solutions, ASCII Group Member since 2014

Remember the days when the most integration your computer and your telephone had was when you connected to the Internet via dial-up modem?  It was really more like the occasional meet-up than a full-fledged marriage between two critical pieces of technology. Phone systems, like mainframe computers, were highly specialized, cumbersome, and expensive long-term commitments — and there was an equally specialized and highly trained sector of people who sold and serviced them.  

Enter Voice over Internet Protocol — or VoIP, to its friends. VoIP turned the meet-ups between phones and computers into a long-term courtship, albeit not a monogamous one.  There were issues with call quality and reliability — and while it presented an affordable option to some consumers who were tired of paying for long-distance minutes and add-on features, it wasn’t particularly business-friendly.

When I first started my consulting business in 1995, it was a traditional break-fix company in New York City. Each year I would get two or three calls from clients asking if we could sell and install a new phone system. I knew there was potential to make money by selling phone systems, but I always referred them to a local phone company and accepted their thanks in return. It didn’t thrill me to give away that revenue, but phone systems were so specialized that I couldn’t spend the resources to get up to speed and certified to sell the systems

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