“The elements include, broadband and WiFi services – grouped together because some vendors are starting to bundle WiFi minutes with broadband. This has some interesting ramifications for worker mobility / connectivity, GSM and 3G services, security and data networking components, a core voice switching system and voice and data devices. These include PC voice clients, dual mode WiFi / GSM handsets, PDA-like smart phones, SIP phones and regular phones, and most importantly “composite applications” or “composite application portals”.
What I mean by composite applications are software clients that might unify access to a number of discrete applications, such as instant messaging, voicemail, one number / redirect services, document sharing, and moving forward, things like location tracking.
How does a reseller bring this all together? The answer in the short term is that they probably don’t. In the short-term resellers need to work out which parts of a solution they feel comfortable with and which parts they feel comfortable providing their customers by partnering with someone else. And because the range of applications that could be pulled together in a composite portal is huge, Resellers need to find a customer need they can service and then replicate to ensure they make maximum return out of the resources they are going to be using.”