I knew today was coming but it arrived all too fast. Today is the effective date that Microsoft Response Point is completely withdrawn from the market and is no longer in engineering maintenance status. What’s it mean for SMB Nation tribal members that enthusiastically embraced this cool small business telephony offering?
Photo: My recent May 2010 meeting with Response Point general manager John Frederiksen at Microsoft Redmond.
Here is a direct quote from Microsoft’s Response Point Team Blog, just so I get the language exactly right, “discontinue the sale, support, and development of the Response Point phone system for small businesses, effective August 31, 2010.”
That means the OEMs, the primary channel that sold response point, can no longer sell Response Point systems. I have messages into Aastra, Syspine and DLink and will write an updated blog later this week with how those vendors will play in a post-response point world.
For those readers unfamiliar with Microsoft Response Point, it *was* a small business telephone system based on VoIP technology that served the 50-seat and smaller market very well. I truly believed it owned the “S” in the small and medium business (SMB) segment. It’s voice navigation technology was the snitz. It was easy to set-up, deploy and maintain. And you can read more about it HERE to learn the basics.
To get you up to speed quickly, HERE is a prior blog posting from last May when Microsoft announced the August 31st withdrawal date from Iraq…opps…I mean that Response Point would be discontinued.
Community Comments
So given today is THE DAY, what does the community think? I interviewed two leading community members yesterday and received an ear full. Here you go!
Ed Carnes shared with me the following:
A little over 3 years ago, Microsoft brought a revolutionary product to market targeted at the small to medium business – Microsoft Response Point. I recall seeing this product at the 2007 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference and was blown away by it. I saw an easy to use, simple to deploy, easy to understand COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM – not just a phone system. The voice recognition was amazing; I hadn’t seen anything that good before. The potential of this product as immediately apparent to me as a way to bring my business into the telephony space but also as a way to get me into those accounts that never wanted to talk about “IT needs” but needed a phone system.
It took some doing to find the correct group in Microsoft to get more information about Response Point, it was well-hidden! Once I found the right group, they put me in touch with Gordon Chen at Syspine, who sent me a Beta test unit directly from Taiwan. I installed this unit in September 2007 using a PowerPoint presentation as an install guide. It was as easy to implement and learn as I thought and I was hooked. I have used it exclusively ever since.
To me, I had found new way to build my business. Response Point is much more of a communications or unified messaging system than a phone system. Running on Windows XP Embedded, controlled through a GUI for users and administration, this was something the normal user had an opportunity to manage. Want a new phone? Just connect one to the network and click a few buttons! Users could now “brand” themselves with up to 599 extensions. They could get their voice mail emailed to them whenever they might be. They could control the behavior of the phones through user rules such as “if I don’t answer in 10 seconds forward the call to my mobile phone” and so forth. With a price point of about 50% less than anything comparable and easy enough for a “non-telephony experienced” IT company like mine to understand, Response Point gave me a great new product. Response Point got me into the door at new accounts that normally would not want to talk to me about IT needs; and when I got in I was able to market Microsoft Open Licensing, servers, desktops, managed services, the works.
I became as involved as I could, serving on the Microsoft Response Point VAR Council and the Wesbell-Aastra VAR Council, speaking at events like the IT Telephony Expo and SMB Nation, participating on Telephonation and other Response Point blogs or forums, assisting in the development of the Response Point certification exam and so forth. I felt anything I could do to support Response Point was worth the time and effort.
A little over a year ago, we Response Point enthusiasts began to hear the rumblings from Redmond that Response Point was in trouble. It seems that Microsoft was on a hunt to cut costs and the SMS&P space always seems to be the first place they go. Microsoft had never spent much money to market Response Point and sales reflected this. We resellers were going as hard as we could, but it is tough to support a product that had few champions at Microsoft. I recall Bill Gates himself loved the product and helped support its genesis, but Bill has been doing other things for some time now. Xuedong Huang “XD” the General Manager of the product and whose voice recognition was such an integral part of Response Point was reassigned. The RP team was decimated and cut to just a few people. Long time advocates like Richard Sprague and Rex Backman were let go. Desperate attempts by many of us to get Microsoft to reconsider this important product were made to the new GM John Frederickson and some of us even tried contacting Steve Ballmer. It was all in vain and Microsoft announced that Response Point would no longer be sold or support after August 31, 2010.
That day has finally arrived and it is a sad day for those partners that work in the SMB space. Microsoft didn’t seem to really care that many companies like mine had expended significant time, effort and money into his product. We were too small I guess.
My company certainly has no plans to switch from Response Point for now; after all, how often does one have to change a “phone system”? Wesbell has left the Response Point market but Syspine still continues on with equipment that will still work for Response Point. Both Aastra and Syspine have developed migration paths for Response Point systems on their equipment (note: I have never used DLINK gear so I have no idea what they are doing). I have stockpiled an extra base unit and some phones for my own use and customer use because not one – not one – of my customers has even considered moving from this platform. We have heard that the Response Point technology might be rolled into the Unified Communications Group at Microsoft, but we have also heard Microsoft state their direction for SMB’s is Hosted Services such as Exchange and UC. I just don’t see where Response Point fits into those plans.
While I have decided to pull Response Point from my services offering, I haven’t quite given up. Some of my other vendors and partners that supported Response Point, such as NGT, offer a nice Hosted Telephony system. There are other vendors with easy to use products that I can consider now that I have experience in SMB telephony. The question for me, and other IT companies like me, is this: “Does IT Telephony really fit into my business model and go to market strategy?”. I am not sure and I suspect that I am not alone.
So, Microsoft officially abandons Response Point today … but I certainly don’t. I hope to see it – or some descendent of it – arise phoenix-like from the ashes in Redmond someday. My company will still be using and supporting the product, one of the best and most innovative products I have seen some out of Redmond in the 20+ years I have worked with Microsoft products.
Need Response Point help? Give us a call.
Ed Carnes
Carnes Group LLC
And the Jason Harrison offered up:
Gone too soon, if Microsoft had stuck with it they would have had a major success with Response Point. It was the right fit for small businesses and with a little more effort could have been truly amazing. It was pretty darn good as it was for most typical small business environments. RIP RP! Let's hope Syspine can be the phenix that rises from the ashes! So far I've not found another solution that was as on target as RP was. Close maybe, but still not all that RP had to bring to the table. Hosted OCS is not the solution for most small businesses. It is painfully obvious that Microsoft at times really struggles with understanding the small business market place and how drive product success there.
Jason Harrison
Harrison Technology Consulting
Next steps?
What’s an orphaned SMB Nation tribal member to do?
- Go to Craigslist of course. Today I found a couple of listings for Response Point in Dallas and Tulsa and I’m sure there’s one in every town, just like service providers in another too hot to print “adult entertainment” CL category :)
- Vendor’s playground. I have it on good word and actual evidence that Aastra and Syspine have already repositioned their Respone Point offerings. Check back later this week for an updated blog.
Resources and Alternatives
- SMB Nation VoIP show, September 20-22, 2010 in Washington DC inside Channel Partners. We’re goon talk about all this stuff. Be there! Sign up at www.telephonation.com
- SMB Nation Fall 2010. And the conversation will occur briefly at our “big show” in Las Vegas from October 20-22, 2010. Join us at www.smbnation.com
- Vendors: see our VoIP=-ism community poll here:Q2 2010 SMB PC Magazine.
- Telephonation. You MUST participate in our really super active SMB Voice community at Telephonation. www.telephonation.com. This is your Response Point life line moving forward!
- Phone+ magazine. Our friends at Virgo Publishing are doing a noble job covering Response Point and the SMB telephony opportunity. www.phoneplusmag.com
- Redmond Channel Partner zombie article
BONUS RP BOOK OFFER!
I’ve got a warehouse full of Response Point books that I wrote. These books are now a collector’s item and I’ll sign each copy I can sell. Here is the deal. We are selling this $59.95 book for $10 plus shipping. The $10 will go directly to “Christa’s Angles” [ which is the charity my niece Christ Brelsford started after her injury/amputation in the January 2010 Haiti earthquake to build a school in a Haiti village. This is your chance to give in a “planned way” now that Haiti is less in the headlines and the needs are greater than ever! Use the code HAITI to receive a signed copy my Microsoft Response Point Primer and donate to a great Haiti earthquake relief cause. Learn more about Christa Brelsford’s Haiti earthquake experience HERE and purcahse my Response Point book HERE
with your discount code and "do good" right here right now. Kindly note that the discount code offers you a $49.95 discount on the $59.95 book price making your net-net price $10 that we will donate to Christa's Angles.
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