VCOMM Managing Director Steve Harris has got used to seeing double having fathered twin girls, but a spell of heady growth at the UC distributor has continued the theme, doubling revenues and staff numbers ahead of a significant market push.
VCOMM has doubled its 2012 annual sales revenue this year and at the same time increased staff numbers twofold, prompting the firm to move into larger office and warehousing facilities in Newbury. And with his mind fixed on driving this growth curve Harris, with clarity of vision, pointed out three focus areas for 2014. "We will continue to work closely with resellers and partners," he said. "Through SIPHON we have access to a strong customer base with specialisations in cloud telephony. We expect the recent rise in CPE sales into this sector to continue growth, and Microsoft Lync enterprise voice deployments will also be in the frame."
VCOMM has invested time and resources into developing product bundles and engineering services around the support of Lync and has started working with Microsoft partners. "This brings strong growth potential as Office365 users look to expand their service into voice and move to full Microsoft Lync," he added.
VCOMM was established in 2004 as a UC distribution company and acquired by SIPHON Networks in December 2012. Great synergy between the companies enabled the united force to help hosted providers and resellers drive UC innovation supported by technical support and engineering skills to sell, deploy and manage the technology. "SIPHON had been working with VCOMM prior to the acquisition and the similar philosophies between the two companies were evident," noted Harris. "We are solely focused on UC technology and providing extended technical support to customers rather than just reselling or distributing products.
"Our belief is that customers require more from a UC distributor than simply product stocking and shipping. They want a distributor that helps to drive innovation as a technology enabler. Several of our existing SIPHON customers asked us to provide extended support in deploying CPE based solutions and the acquisition immediately gave us these distribution capabilities."
SIPHON supports VCOMM's customers by building cloud applications in the data centre while VCOMM supplies the CPE requirements. All VCOMM technical support and engineering services have been integrated with SIPHON to create a services capability within VCOMM. This, pointed out Harris, is key to sales growth. "This sets us apart from catalogue-based distributors," added Harris. "Resellers and service providers come to VCOMM for support and technical knowledge in the UC space."
VCOMM currently has 60 cloud telephony providers and over 300 reseller customers. The company is developing its relationships to launch new services around UC technology. "We have a platform to scale the business and we're confident we will see growth in the adoption of cloud voice applications," added Harris. "Much of this year has been taken up by the integration challenges that an acquisition brings. Now we are focusing on driving operational efficiency between the two companies and also settling into our new office and warehousing facilities. We have also completed a significant new investment into our order and management and CRM system; and we aim to finalise our ISO27001 certification by the end of this year which is a strong reflection of the improvements we have made to our platform."
Harris' achievements draw on many years working in the comms industry and his long stint began while at University. "I completed a year's work experience with Nortel and following graduation worked full time at the company for eight years," said Harris. "This proved to be a great introduction to the industry and I was one of the original employees in Huawei UK, having the opportunity to be involved in launching and establishing its UK and Ireland sales team."
During this time Harris helped the company grow from three employees to over 300 and brought in over £100 million in sales revenue. Since 2006 he has been involved in a number of VoIP and UC companies including running the European sales teams in NexTone and Convergence (which was acquired by Acme Packet) before starting up SIPHON in 2009. Harris noted: "My biggest achievement is starting and establishing SIPHON with minimal outside investment during the middle of a recession, at the same time as having twin girls!"
Across both SIPHON and VCOMM, 50 per cent of the staff are hands-on engineers, skilled team members with real-world experience and certifications across a range of vendor systems and services. "We treat the more traditional logistic requirements of distribution as a baseline and something our customers should receive as standard," noted Harris. "Our knowledge and experience in the UC market enables us to understand our customers' service offering and then deliver extended technical support."
Harris is confident that 2014 will bring cheaper and more reliable IP connectivity to the channel. "The increased delivery of applications from the cloud are already driving huge buying changes among enterprise customers, so I predict further developments in this area next year," he commented. "The IT and comms industries will continue to merge and the forecasted growth of Microsoft Lync Enterprise will be a topic to watch." •