FierceVoIP

FierceVoIP Leaders: Donovan Jones, CEO CounterPath

Pete Wylie — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:15:17 -0500

FierceVoIP: It's been a busy year for CounterPath, including two acquisitions and the recent announcement of restructuring. What's the status of the company right now?

Jones: We're attempting to address the FMC market along two different paths. We want to leverage our existing softphone offerings with the integration of both Firsthand and BridgePort. We also want to identify overlaps in-house and changes in the market so that we can optimize our new FMC products for the market.

FierceVoIP: Were the layoffs you announced recently part of the strategic integration of the acquisitions or were they due to prevailing economic conditions?

Jones: Mainly they were due to the restructuring. Due to a number of outstanding customer contracts, we had a lag in our restructuring after the acquisitions. But also, in this climate, we have to manage the burn and some of the cutbacks are a reflection of striving to optimize the business. We didn't want to get caught off-guard if the market got more difficult.

FierceVoIP: Have you begun to see a slowdown in uptake and leads at CounterPath due to the economic conditions?

Jones: No, we haven't seen a slowdown yet. We're seeing good uptake on software, as people delay hardware purchases. We have seen some slight extension in sales cycles, because people are taking longer to make decisions, given the present uncertainty. But since our products center around cost savings and productivity increases, we expect people to see the value.

FierceVoIP: What are the main challenges in developing and deploying mobile clients?

Jones: The sheer number of unique operating systems out there, in addition to all the handset configurations, that you have to support to provide successful services is a real difficulty. There is a lot of R&D work that goes into addressing this. It's a challenge for any company to put a SIP client in managed support, to enable dual-mode clients, for instance.

FierceVoIP: How does CounterPath handle those issues?

Jones: We've collocated our gateway with the PBX and that's helped with some of the issues, and we've also produced a more lightweight client.

FierceVoIP: How have you integrated Firsthand and BridgePort into CounterPath's overall operations?

Jones: We've been able to take their technology and integrate it with our existing operations to make a better product, especially using the BridgePort offering for our FMC solution. But even more, the smaller companies didn't have the deployed set of channels we had here from selling our desktop softphones. We've been able to leverage their technology to offer new products and services to our existing clients. We've commercialized the offering very well, with a combination of our softphone and additional technology to add to the channels we've already deployed through. We're particularly excited about the continuing integration of the desktop client and mobile offerings.

FierceVoIP: What is the lead time to set up a CounterPath system in the enterprise?

Jones: Well it really depends. If we already interoperate with the specific PBX, it's a pretty quick process. We interoperate with many major systems, so this is usually the case. But if we have to engineer interoperability with the gateway, it can be a bunch of work to knit together several systems, or to keep some functionalities of the PBX exposed in our client. In the most difficult cases, which require the most hands-on engineering and design, it could take up to a few months.

FierceVoIP: What do you think the future holds for FMC?

Jones: The space is so new, you can really only take guesses, but I think we're positioned nicely. I think you'll see greater integration between internet, mobile and desktop services. They are converging more and more. I think in the future, it wont' simply be about voice, either, but about the combination of voice, data, and messaging and how the efficiencies that are created drive productivity. I'm very interested in contextual messaging, with data around messages and perhaps advertising. Location-based services also look like they're poised to take off. I think telepresence and video capabilities will begin to really demonstrate the ability to improve productivity as well.

FierceVoIP Leaders- Michael Tessler, CEO Broadsoft

Pete Wylie — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:05:11 -0500

As Broadsoft celebrates its tenth anniversary this week. FierceVoIP talked with Michael Tessler, CEO of Broadsoft, about Broadsoft's plans for 2009 and his vision for the space,

FierceVoIP: What are some of the benefits of integrating the Broadsoft Anywhere platform?

Tessler: It allows business people much greater flexibility and reachability. I can walk into my office and switch seamlessly from my mobile device to my handset and vice versa. There is no special software or handset capability to enable, because the function is baked right into the network. It's not so much a handover, but a seamless bridging, so people on different devices can be connected and are compatible with the system.

FierceVoIP: What sets Broadsoft's offering apart from other players in the space?

Tessler: Other companies are offering dual-mode solutions or solutions that are really complex, which you would need considerable IT support behind. Our solution is very simple, yet very effective, and I think it can be deployed more easily than our competitor's solutions. All a customer has to do is configure a phone number, and handover is enabled, regardless of the customer's mobile device.

FierceVoIP: Are there other qualities that separate Broadsoft in its specific competitive arena?

Tessler: I think our range of options and offerings for customers, including media servers, conferencing and unified messaging, makes us an attractive option for their hosted services, because our solutions can be scaled easily and are reliable, in addition to being easy to implement. We also are fast to market with our products and outpace our competitors in innovation. This lets the end-user integrate voice and IP and collaboration services that they can use to run their businesses better.

FierceVoIP: Broadsoft recently announced some layoffs, what was the reason behind those?

Tessler: We're trying to be proactive about finding the right size for the company in the present marketplace. It was a fairly small reduction in staff, although it's never a small issue for someone getting let go, but we knew we were entering a very uncertain marketplace, and we wanted to make sure we were well-positioned for success going into 2009. We wanted to ensure we had the right people in the right places, and we realized some regions we could pull back on and still give quality service.

FierceVoIP: What are some of Broadsoft's plans and goals for 2009?

Tessler: We'll look for continued transformation of carrier markets, further adoption of standards like SIP, and fully hosted affairs with IP-trunking and SIP-trunking. Some of our carrier customers came back after we entered the early market, and told us they wanted more interoperability and they wanted it baked in. We've had a chance to work on that, and I think, beyond interoperability, we've had our involvement with the SIP Forum, not just on the interoperability level, but on installation, troubleshooting and maintenance. That's part of a big program for use that will continue for some time.

FierceVoIP: What do you think the next year to two years hold for the space?

Tessler: I think you'll continue to see migration of networks from TDM to IP, and I think it's passed its tipping point in that regard for several reasons. The cost savings both in cap ex and op ex are very attractive and will convert people in tough economic times, carriers will continue to make investments as they compete and out-innovate each other.

FierceVoIP: How has the economic downturn affected Broadsoft?

Tessler: We remain cautiously optimistic about the outlook, because SaaS is an attractive option when you are trying to cut costs and get leaner as a company. We saw some pullback in September and into October, but we're back on track in Q4. We're seeing a shift to where carriers buy on a just-in-need basis, and reduce license float, but that's always been our model, so we're not overly concerned. We have more than 400 customers that range in size in 61 different countries. We also think our diversity in customer base, from small carriers to Verizon-like incumbents, is helpful.

FierceVoIP: Do you see any current M&A opportunities for Broadsoft?

Tessler: We always carefully consider opportunities for consolidation, but we want to stay in the applications layer and have been very clear that we won't go beneath that in the stack. Of course, in this climate, something may present itself as a must-take opportunity.

FierceVoIP Leaders: Roberta Mackintosh, Executive Director of Advanced Voice and UC, Verizon Business

Pete Wylie — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 09:32:34 -0500

FierceVoIP sat down with Roberta Mackintosh, Executive Director of Advanced Voice and UC&C for Verizon Business, to discuss the VoIP industry and Verizon Business's plans for unified communications.

Fierce VoIP: What are some key trends you see emerging in the VoIP space right now?

Mackintosh: If we take a macro view, you have to recognize the explosion of unified communications and advanced voice products. It's gone from 18 months ago, when we were just having conversations with some large, lead clients about unified communications, to now when it's at the forefront of their communications strategy. We're seeing a lot of interest in people wanting to make decisions in voice telephony that will help them evolve to the UC solution that fits their company the best.

FierceVoIP: What are some of the ways you tailor solutions to individual companies?

Mackintosh: We want to give our clients a clear understanding of our approach to unified communications solutions and the capabilities of our systems, so that we can match them to their expectations for their products. We need to understand what they're trying achieve with unified communications to assist them in meeting their objectives.

Since Verizon Business is an IP communications specialist and has capabilities across the board, we can provide VoIP-based inbound and outbound calling, automated calling, unified communications or a hybrid solution depending on the customer and its situation. We work with several different vendors and have significant inventory to find the best match of products and services for the individual client.

FierceVoIP: What do you think will be the driver(s) for growth in the space as we enter 2009?

Mackintosh: I think people are seeing two key benefits in IP communications, and especially unified communications. The first one is the personnel benefit. Efficiency increases with unified communications because there is more control gained over work flow and time management. The second benefit is business applications, and this is not fully recognized yet. As the applications begin to really demonstrate good ROI, I think they are going to really drive growth.

FierceVoIP: Can you think of specific verticals that stand to gain from integrating business applications and unified communications deployments?

Mackintosh: Shipping companies, for instance, can identify problems more easily and stop shipments before they go out with something that's just going to have to be recalled. Keeping one shipment back so that the problem can be identified and remedied would have significant benefit logistically and financially for that company. It's also a mystery to see how much benefit could come from UC deployments to the government sector, especially at the state and local level. The higher education space is also one to watch closely. The challenges we have in both markets is really finding and testing the applications that will make a difference for their employees.

FierceVoIP: What are some roadblocks you have seen to unified communications adoption?

Mackintosh: If the CIO's of the organizations are not intimately aware of the business processes of the rest of the employees, that can cause them not to implement the business applications to full potential. We also want to shift the functionality from a manual process to an automatic one, so that the solution is as easy to use as possible. That really helps bring UC into a business. I think it will be awhile before you see really widespread UC adoption, because it has some stepping stones to get over, such as making all applications IP-based and platform agnostic.

FierceVoIP: Who do you see as Verizon Business's biggest competitor in the space?

Mackintosh: Most of our traditional competitors have an offering they are pitching as a unified communications solution, but when you look at the services, it's really not a full UC product. AT&T, for instance, bought a conferencing company and basically renamed that division as unified communications. BT operates more on a big deal basis, and doesn't integrate as well because Verizon Business has a unique perspective and gives honest advice about which product will work best for the individual customer, since we're not tied to a specific vendor. We are seeing some aggressive expansions by Microsoft, Cisco and Nortel that we're watching closely.

FierceVoIP Leaders: Vivek Khuller, Divitas Networks

Pete Wylie — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:08:25 -0400

FierceVoIP sat down with Divitas CEO Vivek Khuller to talk about his company, UC, and the future of the VoIP space.

FierceVoIP: Vivek, where is Divitas seeing the most market penetration right now?

Khuller: We are seeing a lot of adoption of the Divitas 2.0 mobile client in legal spaces, and I mean non-big law firms, which are already on Blackberrys. I'm talking about the government side, courthouses, public defenders' offices, since they use public funds, the cost savings they receive from our solution is a big selling point. We've also seen Sawtel pick us up in the VoIP carrier space.

FierceVoIP: What do you think are some important trends right now in the industry?

Khuller: I think the continued adoption of smartphones by the general public is a really important trend right now. RIM brought smartphone adoption to businesses, and Apple brought it to the public through the entertainment features and excellent interface. But the full capabilities of the smartphones are still being explored, and we're poised as a convergence company really mobilizing business applications on the smartphones, because until now, only email had been truly mobilized.

FierceVoIP: With tough economic times looming, why do you think customers should migrate into the VoIP space next year?

Khuller: It's so cost effective, I think people will see the value. Mobile voice and mobile Wifi for employees cuts back on cellular costs and the need for expensive hardware in the office. Companies in the financial, consulting and law space that took the cost associated with cellular and PBX services for granted in the past will start to reexamine them now, and I think they will be far more interested in cost-effective solution on dual-mode phones.

We also see people were first generation WiFi tech users like education and health care, and we want to target them in a novel way. We want to take the people who were very point-solution based and show them the value of new advances in voice technology.

FierceVoIP: Who would you consider Divitas's biggest competitor?

Khuller: There are a lot of companies out there who do some of the things we do, but I really think the biggest competitor for a start-up is inertia. What I mean by inertia is, the customers' reliance on the present technology and their legacy products. You have to figure out how to get them to embrace new products on the market and show them the leverage they gain by using your product.

FierceVoIP: What do you think the next year to two years holds for the industry?

Khuller: I think you can expect to see further convergence in three areas. One, in the network, with the proliferation of mobile networks, people will want to be able to use them in an integrated way. Two, in applications, business voice and business text right now, but more useful and effective business applications will drive it here. Three, devices will begin to converge. You had desk phone and a mobile phone before, now, you'll have it all in one device with features neither had before. The proliferation of standards like SIP is letting people tap into apps with ease, which will increase convergence as well.

FierceVoIP Leaders: Marco Limena, CEO Sylantro Systems

Doug Mohney — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 21:49:24 -0400

On the eve of Sylantro's annual users conference, FierceVoIP chatted with Sylantro Systems CEO Marco Limena to discuss the state of the VoIP industry and what the future may hold for the industry and Sylantro.

FierceVoIP: Everyone has got the financial crisis on their minds these days. What do you think the implications will be for telephony and VoIP?

Limena: I think experimental projects and infrastructure budgets will be cut, and vendors will really have to justify the business benefit of what they are doing.

FierceVoIP: How do you think it will affect your company directly?

Limena: Most of the more than 95 carriers we work with sell services for around $25 per month. They tell me, Marco, we spend an average of $200 in sales cost to reach a customer and more on other costs, so it takes us about 12 months to reach profitability with each customer. If the customer has any issue with a piece of the product you have provided and needs to place a single call back for assistance, we've just delayed profitability for three more months, and that's not something we can afford. So we must work to provide a product that is not only useful and valuable, but reliable and easy to use as well.

FierceVoIP: What are some changes you see coming in the VoIP space, or would like to see happen?

Limena: For a long time, the industry has operated in silos of technology. Voice was voice, text was text, so on so on. But we're moving beyond that, you see software driving the next-gen softphones and you see vertical silos being replaced by integrated telephony platforms. The question for the future really is how can you deliver simple, reliable solutions and specialized applications for business, because the "one size fits all" approach is not going to work going forward.

FierceVoIP: Does Sylantro have any product announcements coming in the next quarter?

Limena: We are really excited about launching our new set of specialized applications for our Web platform that were developed in our Synapps "sandbox." You'll see some great innovation in automated inbound and outbound campaigns, for instance, a car dealership wants to inform customers about warranty options about to expire on vehicle purchases, or a university wants to notify thousands of students about a last-minute course offering or schedule change: We have applications that will make these outbound campaigns automatic, and then measurable once people have responded.

FierceVoIP: What do you see as the main benefit of the application bundle you are launching?

Limena: The way we test the usability, we do it in real world conditions. Many other times it's tested against IT managers, and that can lead to problems when people with out that knowledge base have to try to work out issues with them. Like I said, one phone call back to the carrier because a customer can't work out an issue costs the carrier three months of profitability, so we want to make sure there are easy solutions.

We want to make applications that are cost-efficient to the provider and easily applicable for end-users. I think we have a great product, because now, people need to move away from cost containment to think about productivity enhancement. The middle-level people at a business, sales, marketing, they're not thinking cut costs, they just want to do their job better, and I think we can help.

FierceVoIP: What do you think the next two to three years has in store for the VoIP industry?

Limena: Well, service providers generated something like $3.2 trillion in global revenue last year, but you know that's diminishing and customers are moving elsewhere because they realize it's about more than just voice now. So we need to take that huge demand that is there, and transform that business into something new. Any challenge presents opportunity, and I think you will see that delays are not acceptable, but the people who can deliver value-added services and think about how to do that reliably and with no delay will be very successful.

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FierceVoIP Leaders: Andy Ory, President, CEO, and Co-founder, Acme Packet
FierceVoIP Leaders: John Lazar, President & COO, MetaSwitch
FierceVoIP Leaders: Mark Spencer - Founder and CTO, Digium

FierceVoIP Leaders: John Lazar, President & COO, MetaSwitch

Pete Wylie — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:11:04 -0400

FierceVoIP: Let's talk a little about MetaSwitch's recent deal with Embarq.

John Lazar: We think the Embarq project is very interesting for two big reasons. Number 1, it is an obvious validation of our strategy to extend our reach. Embarq has more than 700 customers from Tier 1 ones down the chain. Secondly, Embarq allows us to offer cutting edge services, because they understand that subscribers are accessing content through many platforms and devices. Together, we offer broad and coherent access across devices. Embarq's web-based features for end-users are also quite attractive, and its web portal is also very good.

FierceVoIP: Does MetaSwitch have any acquisition plans in the near future, either buying another company in the space or perhaps merging with another one?

Lazar: No, we have no plans of that sort at the time. It's not part of our growth strategy at this time. Of course, we never say never, and if the right company came along that we thought would really add value, we might consider something. But what I want to stress, is that we are growing strongly, we have a great revenue stream, and we're not looking to become part of a larger company right now.

FierceVoIP: Are there any plans for MetaSwitch to expand into other markets?

Lazar: We are focused on our already substantial Tier 1 offerings and making sure they are the best they can be. But we are also looking at gradual expansion upwards and outwards to new markets. We have the beginnings of an operation in the Caribbean and Latin America, and we're excited about the possibility of substantial revenue uptick in this region in the next few years. We are also looking at conscious expansion into Asia and mainland Europe, but not immediately on either.

FierceVoIP: Can we expect any significant new product or service rollouts from MetaSwitch soon?

Lazar: We have a fantastic range of revenue-driving applications we can offer clients right now, and we will continue to add meaningful ones to that package. We have a range of developing products; we're looking at set-top boxes and next-generation mobile devices, and we think there are some really interesting revenue opportunities in mobile and TV.

FierceVoIP: What does the next year to two years hold for Metaswitch?

Lazar: Well, we see some very interesting vertical opportunities in enterprise, opportunities to refine our offerings and provide new applications and services. Also, we are in the process of working with universities for deployments there. I can't comment on any specifics yet, but definitely watch that space.

In a broader sense, we're proud of what we've achieved here. We've gone from zero customers to 300 customers in eight years, we're close to $100 million in annual revenue. We've seen some competitors in the space go by the wayside. The reception we continue to receive from our customers is fantastic. They note, as key values of our products, the reliability, service and customer support, quality engineering and innovation.

FierceVoIP: Do you think the current shaky economic conditions will negatively affect any of MetaSwitch's plans or revenue streams?

Lazar: Even with the current economic climate, we've seen no slow down yet and are hoping that will continue. I think the next two to three years will be very exciting and quite unpredictable. To survive, I think we'll have to innovate very fast in a rapidly changing environment. As always, we're excited for the challenge.

FierceVoIP Leaders: Mark Spencer â€“ Founder and CTO, Digium

Doug Mohney — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 21:48:38 -0400

On the eve of AstriCon, FierceVoIP caught up with one of Digium's most frequent fliers, founder and CTO Mark Spencer.

FierceVoIP: How did you come to found Digium?

Spencer: I was a co-op student in 1999 with ADTRAN, then started a business running Linux support, and I was put in charge of finding a phone system. I realized it would be very expensive to put a new system in place at the office, so I created my own. I got the experience there and we refocused our model around phone systems.

FierceVoIP: Can we expect any big announcements out of AstriCon this year?

Spencer: One major announcement, I can't give any specifics on it though. We are also announcing the Innovations Award there.

FierceVoIP: Has all of the recent turmoil in financial markets and general economic slowdown affected Digium's sales at all?

Spencer: We have been fortunate not to have been part of the downswing and so far we have not been affected. We've had 28 consecutive quarters of growth and profitability.

I think some of that is because we are diversified and have more than half of our business overseas. We have a good presence in emerging markets as well as a strong core business in traditional markets. For instance, the largest gas company in Malaysia, PetroFac, uses our product to communicate with their rigs out at sea.

FierceVoIP: You are officially listed as CIO and founder of Digium. What does that job entail for you these days?

Spencer: I look for important emerging technology in the space and keep a monitor on the open source community and what they are doing. All together I try to drive the future of Asterisk, both at a company level and in the Asterisk community.

FierceVoIP: Is it mainly an evangelical role?

Spencer: Partly evangelical, getting the word out about Asterisk and new developments, but also its about maintaining the company culture as we grow from the fifty person company we were not too long ago, to a company with three times that many personnel. I love the culture of a small company, very down to earth and collaborative, but you have to grow and try to maintain that as you do.

FierceVoIP: Have there been any specific changes to Asterisk recently?

Spencer: We've dealt with some scalability issues in the carrier class with some tweaks but nothing too extensive.

FierceVoIP: Who do you feel is Digium's biggest competitor in the space?

Spencer: Well, you hear names like FreeSWITCH and Nortel with SIP. FreeSWITCH's main engineer started out with Asterisk, and they say we have scalability issues, but we have some huge installations working fine. Nortel's products can't even talk to their own phones. I think Asterisk has the value of practicality through open source.

FierceVoIP Leaders: Chris Lyman, CEO Fonality

Pete Wylie — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 08:56:36 -0400

FierceVoIP: How did you get the idea for Fonality?

Lyman: I had purchased a start-up residential VoIP service from a friend and I realized I needed a phone system for the office. I had never priced one before, and so I was shocked to get a five-digit quote for the office staff of four. That's when I realized I was in the wrong market, and that's really how I started Fonality. I realized there was a huge opportunity in the SMB market for a better priced option than the major players were offering.

FierceVoIP: Bloggers have raised concerns in the past about the remote access you have to the IP-PBX solution. Have customers raised the same ones?

Lyman: Well it's more something we just discuss with the customer. We do have access to the end-users box, but that's a cost-saving mechanism, not a privacy invasion. Part of our value proposition is that updates and add-ons to existing systems don't require a truck roll. We can do it remotely, and save the customer a lot of money, while also ensuring the highest level of security. I mean, that's how we competed and eventually won the Dell deal. We weren't even on their radar until they realized our solution runs on a Dell box, and they looked into it and saw how much more cost-effective the Fonality solution is.

FierceVoIP: Speaking of the Dell deal, who was your biggest competitor there and in general in the VoIP space?

Lyman: I think in order it's probably Avaya, Cisco, Nortel, Shoretel and I guess down to someone like Panasonic.

FierceVoIP: Why do you think you are competitive with these companies, all of which are larger and have more legacy business?

Lyman: I think we are competitive, and will continue to be competitive for two reasons. The first, most obvious one, we just are a better value. Our systems, since they are PC based, are much cheaper to make and install. Secondly, the open source code that we built our solution over enabled a really low cost of development, which we can in turn pass to the customer. We also offer a higher degree of mobility and ease of transition to additional systems or features.

FierceVoIP: Do you have any plans to expand out of the SMB market and compete for larger accounts like Dell more often?

Lyman: We are really not comfortable working with a customer with over 500 seats at one location, and I offer this rationale. There is a deli near our office, and you go in to order, they hand you the menu; it's got like 16 pages. You can be pretty sure, that while nothing is going to be outright terrible, nothing is going to be that good either. I don't want to be that company. Our business model depends on the pricing we offer SMB's and I don't see a move out of that space anytime soon.

FierceVoIP: Well it's obviously working well for you; Fonality has demonstrated 15 consecutive quarters of growth.

Lyman: It's actually 16 now. We just got the second quarter numbers, and surprisingly enough, it was the largest percentage growth we've ever experienced at Fonality, revenues increased 31 percent.

FierceVoIP: That's impressive for a business that has already grown considerably. Do you foresee any slowdown in the growth given the present condition of the economy?

Lyman: I don't quite know, to be honest. We continue to grow and I guess I can think of two reasons why we would see continues growth in recession conditions. One, as budgets get tighter, our solution becomes more attractive. It enables people to work from home elegantly, as well as being cheaper to install and operate than traditional PBX offerings.

Second, I think more and more businesses are recognizing that the whole communications industry will be IP soon, and they are examining IP-centric offerings to cut costs and increase mobility.

FierceVoIP: Where do you see the industry, both your niche and the broader VoIP space, in the next three to five years?

Lyman: Well I think IP is the only way to go in the future. I just think "VoIP" as a term, can be misused and misunderstood, because it's really a question of "Which communications will not be IP in three to five years?" Kind of like if you asked me when the first digital camera was released, where I thought that industry was going. I think there really isn't any other way to go. Most of the big telcos even, its IP for most of a long-distance call, and it might travel the last mile on copper. And that's even getting replaced soon enough. The biggest question to me is when all the communications someone wants begin to converge; for instance, on my Blackberry, I'm texting, browsing, SMSing, all in addition to regular phone calls. I think that's where the industry is moving, total communications convergence and ease of use and access, and the mobility that IP can bring.

FierceVoIP Leaders: Jonathan Christensen, GM of audio and video for Skype

Pete Wylie — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 11:38:50 -0400

Jonathan Christensen will be speaking at ITEXPO next week.

FierceVoIP: Jonathan, tell us a little about Skype's current offerings.

Christensen: Well, we are using Skype technology right now to place this call. I dialed my PR representative in London to chat briefly before this interview began. We then dialed into the bridge we are on currently through Skype.

Skype is shifting from pure VoIP and IP telephony to offering rich, multi-modal communications. In the past, on the old telephone system, it was voice and voice only. Now, customers want the ability to text, file share, access rich audio and video in one communications interface, and Skype wants to position to provide these services.

FierceVoIP: What would a good example of the benefits of rich communication be?

Christensen: For instance, earlier today I had a conference call with some of our product developers. While we were engaging in the discussion, I sent them a PowerPoint presentation over the same connection, which we were then able to discuss in real time. They responded by sending me an Excel spreadsheet of some of their results, which we also discussed real time. So I think you can see the benefit of this rich communication, both in this enterprise setting, and for the individual consumer as well.

FierceVoIP: What has Skype done to set itself apart from competitors in the space?

Christensen: At first, Skype was purely a voice tool. But it had great mass appeal because it was free, easy to use, and easy to download. Then, we improved the model by solving scalability issues, audio issues and packet loss problems, so that we were always responding to customer feedback and improving the offering.

FierceVoIP: Will Skype remain primarily a voice company, or can we expect major changes, such as new market entries or products?

Christensen: I think we will continue to iterate the flagship offering, because we continue to see good revenue and think there is a lot of room for growth there. We are also looking into the enterprise space, and we are putting increased focus on mobile applications and continuing to develop down that path. I can't comment on specific platforms, but rest assured, we are looking at adopting Skype technology to the relevant ones.

FierceVoIP: What do you think the next three to five years hold for the industry?

Christensen: I think the continued development of scalable, robust solutions involving VoIP. I think the business UC sector will be a good indicator of the prospects in the mass market. The traditional limiters, such as battery life and CPU power, will probably get solved or continue to hinder in that sector, which will speak volumes about commercial applications. I think Skype's revenue possibilities in this space are fantastic, and I think we have a great leadership position in the area to continue growth. In three years, I think Skype will be a larger, more profitable company still offering the same rich communications experience to a global customer base.

FierceVoIP Leaders: David Wong, CEO, D2 Technologies

Pete Wylie — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 09:55:57 -0400

Wong sat down with FierceVoIP to discuss his company's recently announced mCUE UC interface for Google's Android platform.

FierceVoIP: Why do you think D2 was the first to release an Android-based interface?

Wong: There are two reasons primarily. While other voice companies focused on VoIP software for things like WinMobile and Linux based research, we believed that JavaSC would be the language of choice. It is open-source and it has a huge developer base, so we liked that combination, and we were working with the language before Google even announced Android. We have also acquired or developed in house, all of the components necessary for completely integrated, fixed-mobile convergence, and like I said, we were already working on the platform for them.

FierceVoIP: Do you see any companies challenging you in this space, or challenging the mCUE specifically, perhaps?

Wong: I think that each component of mCUE, yes, it has several competitors. For instance, there are many people with good codecs, or good protocols, or competing languages, but they don't combine all of the features and abilities mCUE has. So, I don't know of anyone combining technologies like we do to make the best product. If you look at the Apple iPhone, there was not one new component in that product, but the interface was user-friendly and they combined things no one had thought of before. That is part of why they succeeded so much.

FierceVoIP: That's an interesting point you raise, so you think the Apple example is a good parallel to your product?

Wong: I think we combined existing components with our development expertise and software background to make a product that will be successful and fill a niche very well. I tell my employees, people these days suffer from "user indigestion." What I mean, is people are overwhelmed sometimes with how many technologies there are, and if you make things simpler, create a good user experience, you are going to do well. I think in this tech environment, the challenge is not to come up with better technology, because it's already here. The challenge is integration, and making complicated systems easier.

FierceVoIP: Can you comment on first-adopters or companies planning on using the product?

Wong: Well I can't comment on specific companies just yet, and the product still needs the Android platform to be released, but we have already entered negotiations with several firms. We've been happy with the variety of interested parties; we've worked with handset OEMs, enterprise OEMs and service providers.