Ultimately, SMBs will go one of two ways:

1. Buy, install and manage on-premises PBX with connections to multiple providers.

2. Outsource. Buy phones only.

In both cases, the service provider and equipment vendors are independent. The underlying technology is so simple and standardized, vendor survival will only be possible with focus on one thing.

Being a service provider AND a hardware/software company is too much. That’s why Microsoft Response Point partnered with Junction Networks and other service providers. They recognized they are not service providers and aren’t trying to be everything for everyone.

Ooma and Vonage don’t want your customers, unless you mean to tell me that the vast majority of your customers are mom-and-pop shops, SOHO, and some number of seats smaller than 25.

These are the guys that roll into Best Buy, Office Depot, Staples and/or Costco, buy something off the shelf, plug it in, and go onto their next problem of the day.

If they have more sophisticated needs, they’ve probably gotten a call from Cox Business or XO or somebody else, or have found a VAR to install.

What I suspect is that ooma is going to do is prep a bundle that’s preconfigured for the SMB/multi-line problem. And no, you can’t go into a Best Buy or an Office Depot and find “plenty of options” there.

Right now, you can buy an 8×8 solution — hardware and service — from Office Depot. You can go through Dell to get a Fonality solution, but that doesn’t have service bundled in. You could go to Costco to get a Microsoft Response Point solution, but it doesn’t have service bundled in and who knows what is happening with Response Point.

So, no, there aren’t “plenty” of options for a SOHO or smaller SMB to simply roll into Best Buy and do one-stop shopping.

Further, they want to choose phones based on open standards, so they are thrilled that we support any SIP device, software phone, etc.

Are you suggesting that Ooma will turn the devices into Asterisk PBxs on site at customer locations? Aren’t there plenty of options like that out there today? If this is the end game for Ooma-SMB, then they are way behind in a crowded race.

Seriously, a small business owner isn’t looking for open SIP, he’s looking for cheap minutes. If you mean to tell me that the average mom-and-pop shop of a half dozen people cares about SIP, I’d be really surprised.

The SMB guy wants something that they can plug in, and it works. Preferably plugged in by a VAR/consultant.

You are also assuming that Vonage and ooma (and Skype, for that matter) are A) Not aware of what a SMB user would want in an offering and B) Wouldn’t go build those basic features themselves.

ooma’s hardware runs Asterisk on top of a Linux derivative. Just how much work do you think the ooma guys will have to enable that laundry list of features?

They would have to make major changes in order to cater to a business crowd.

I think for the smaller and/or distributed businesses of 3-15 people, ooma and Vonage will come to play.