ITEXPO (News - Alert) is the event where service providers learn how to profitably roll out services their subscribers need. With ITEXPO East kicking off tomorrow, we’re taking a look at some of ITEXPO’s past providers in the communication space. ITEXPO West 2011 in Austin, TX was a huge success and, on top of bringing together sellers, resellers and manufacturers, TMCnet’s Stefanie Mosca had a moment to sit down with Dean Parker, Jr., President and CEO of Callis (News - Alert), a provider of hosted PBX solutions, amongst many other technologies.
Parker told TMCnet that Callis got its start in the late 90s, and in 2005 the company transitioned over to a hosted PBX (News - Alert) company as hosted PBX products were being widely adopted.
What is referred to today as “the cloud” is simply what Callis has been doing all is installed and maintained by Callis, providing all the benefits of a hosted PBX solution without the upfront investment and hassles when dealing with multiple vendors.
Recently, Callis launched a unified communications (UC) suite in addition to their hosted PBX offerings that use Microsoft (News - Alert) for easy adoption.
“People have been used to the Exchange in the Microsoft suite of products, so we’ve taken that, we’ve integrated it with our VoIP platform and feel that we have a good end-to-end suite for the customers dealing with the data, security, messaging, email, collaboration, and the hosted PBX, which is kind of our bedrock of the company as we grew over the last five years,” said Parker.
What Parker noticed when it comes to the evolution of how businesses relied on communications, whether they used hosted PBX, VoIP, multiple vendors or not, is that businesses went from a centric solution to a DIY solution that involved more than one vendor and now they’re going back to wanting a simplified, centric solution once more.
As for cloud adoption, Callis is seeing twice the increase it was versus a year ago due to it being adopted both by small and large scale businesses. What Callis’ mission is, however, is to help the most complex cases and needs and simplify them with their range of products, including hosted PBX, in one, easy-to-manage space.
In light of a hosted PBX solution, where hosted is sometimes synonymous with insecure, Callis has had no security issues whatsoever because each customer has a private connection to all of their data.
“At the end of the day, people don’t care of their technology changes, so long as it still meets basic criteria, such as when they pick up the phone they want to hear a dial tone. When they send an email, they want to know it goes through. When they go onto the Internet, they want to know they’re not being hacked,” said Parker. “We in the technology world get excited about all these cool features, the customers have a few features that they care about. If you deliver them well and take care of the customer and keep your churn very low, your customers will tell other customers.”
That, Parker notes, is the secret to a growing model.
Michelle Amodio is a TMCnet contributor. She has helped promote companies and groups in all industries, from technology to banking to professional roller derby. She holds a bachelor's degree in Writing from Endicott College and currently works in marketing, journalism, and public relations as a freelancer.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi