Managed Service Providers today operate much differently than they did a few years
ago, due in large part to the proliferation of the cloud and virtualization. At many businesses, thin clients have replaced expensive desktop PC’s, and Virtual Servers and virtual services now handle much of the heavy lifting such as file sharing and application management. Even with the advancements in business computing, MSP’s aren’t fully leveraging the power of the cloud.
Earlier this year, telecommunications giant, Avaya, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. 
Three months ago, Toshiba announced plans to shut down its business phone division, leaving dealers across the nation shocked and scrambling to come up with alternative solutions. Brian Metherell, vice president and general manager of Toshiba America Information Systems’ (TAIS) Telecommunication Systems Division (TSD), sent a letter to dealers notifying them of the shutdown.
In the old days (early 2000’s), Data LANs and business phone systems were like my ex-wife’s birthday. She was born on December 29th, and while her birthday was only four days separated from Christmas, I was very sternly warned that they were never to be combined or merged in any way. They were two very separate events, just as voice and data were very separate technologies within the same physical office space.
Eventually, the technologies converged. The holidays never did. And it seemed to me that for the longest time (and even still today), data sales and implementation processes continued to remain separated from voice sales and implementation processes.
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