A technology takeover has begun in favour of SIP and channel-focused Paul Taylor, Sales and Marketing Director at Voiceflex, has the ISDN replacement target squarely in his sights.
Betting your farm on the next big thing can be an occupational hazard. Nobody knows that more than Taylor who, in hindsight, made a wrong call early in his career. But, his finger found the SIP pulse long before the newborn heartbeat of the comms sector was audible. "When mobile phones first appeared in the mid-80s I was offered a partnership in a mobile phone company," said Taylor. "I told the chap that at £1,500 each they would never catch on. Never dismiss anything."
Perhaps it is the missed mobile opportunity that opened Taylor's mind to new possibilities without boundaries, and his early stage recognition of SIP should be applauded, especially in the context of BT's intention to kibosh ISDN by 2025. "The biggest opportunity is SIP now ISDN is dead within 10 years," stated Taylor. "The ramifications are colossal, not only for the channel but for every business in the country using ISDN. Moving forward there will just be SIP or hosted. Every new system sold should have SIP."
In a move that illustrates the timeliness of plugging hosted gaps in a product portfolio Voiceflex built a solid bridge to the hosted market following a link-up with GENBAND to provide the Nuvia UC hosted telephony platform. "Since the beginning of the year we'd been looking for a UC hosted application," explained Taylor. "It's imperative to offer value added business services like WebRTC and collaboration, but we cannot sacrifice performance for features, so we took our time to evaluate the available options.
"We found that GENBAND's Nuvia application has a strong track record, and the company knows how to build mission-critical communications. The application has been built from decades of experience delivering carrier-grade exchanges worldwide. The launch of GENBAND within our channel partners and the channel is our near-term priority. There will be significant organic growth from our current partners but we aim to build on our channel base with GENBAND and SIP."
With 20-plus years experience in the comms industry Taylor has become adept at leveraging a combination of vision and knowledge. He started out in 1983 selling internal telephone systems, a job he sought following a stint at door knocking. "I sold insurance and pensions door-to-door and got fed up working evenings and weekends when my mates were out enjoying themselves," he recalled. "I went for an interview with Birmingham General Telephones and never looked back."
In 2005 Taylor operated as UK Manager for Swyx and was tasked with finding a SIP service provider. "I had never heard of SIP and neither had the carriers," he commented. "I'd been involved in the birth of ISDN, but looking at the SIP offering I knew from the outset that it would become the ISDN replacement technology. Frontier Systems offered first line support for Swyx and said, 'we can do SIP'. So off we went."
Starting a public voice network in 2005 allowed Voiceflex to design an infrastructure based on best practice within data, quickly converging voice. "The lack of legacy integration meant no compromise to our SIP network," added Taylor. "Voiceflex tested with every telephone manufacturer and became approved for SIP. Having more PBX manufacturer approvals than any other UK SIP provider has been an important foundation from the start."
Voiceflex claims a number of firsts - the first to provide an assured data connection, first to offer ASDL2 connectivity, and first to connect with BT IPX for in and outbound services. Six years ago, Voiceflex developed what Taylor says was an industry first online portal for ordering, provisioning and billing. "This was developed so we didn't have to talk to customers," he said. "But we've reverted back to the traditional way of account managers engaging with customers through human interaction, which has proved far more beneficial than a faceless portal. We have moved into field-based sales and away from desk-based operations. As SIP grows so does the applications it supports. Having field-based account managers has made us more aware of what the channel wants. This has won us more business, mainly from referrals."
Voiceflex has witnessed double digit growth for the last five years and the upward trend will continue. "Ten years ago we had no product, no customers and no revenue," said Taylor. "Voiceflex is privately owned and now generates a £6 million turnover. We started with one engineer and me, now we have 30 members of staff. Our route to market is channel-only, and we mean channel-only. This will not change. Our partners range from one man and his dog to million pound turnover companies. The complete cross section of the channel is important to us. We understand the needs and wants of the channel and are still small enough to adapt to change quickly."
The £6 million turnover is purely SIP and calls minutes, no ISDN or PSTN. "We want to double over the next four to five years," added Taylor." And we will continue to purely focus on the channel and bring new products to market. A land grab in the SIP market has begun with some traditional providers putting their cards on the table. Their current marketing seems to be around the commercials and not network topology, engagement and features. SIP service providers are not all the same, so channel partners should investigate a number of alternatives."
To show the differences between SIP service providers Taylor explained that Voiceflex is really a 'sIP A' provider. "Our trunks are application-based on just dial tone," he stated. "The more features you have the more benefits you can offer the customer. Gone are the days of just sell yourself, your company and your products, you need to include the SIP and ISP provider. They can all add additional benefits."
Also worth a mention is ABBA (Advanced Behaviour Based Analysis), Voiceflex's fraud application. The company lost a fraud case two years ago (the actual fraud occurred two years prior to the case), and as a result Voiceflex re-wrote its fraud process that, claims Taylor, is one of the 'best in the industry'. Attaining such high standards applies to all development projects. "We have a number of core values," said Taylor. "Whenever we look at new products or services, many of which may not be customer-facing, we look for stability, security, connectivity, features, and then price. These are the same virtues that we expect our customers to uphold."
Product education, as well as features and benefits, are key to success. Not surprisingly Voiceflex has embarked on an accreditation programme for all new partners, and the scheme is designed to offer full support and ensure partners are up to speed with Voiceflex's products and services. "Resellers who don't understand data cannot sell SIP or hosted," said Taylor. "Therefore, our online education seminars give partners the information they need to boost their confidence and ability to offer our solutions. If resellers are not selling SIP, someone else will be."