TMCnet recently had the opportunity to sit down with Broadvox (News - Alert) Vice President of Marketing and Product Management David Byrd to discuss his company’s progress over the past 12 months, as well as the challenges to come over the next 12. Here’s what he had to say:
TMCnet: How will 2007 best be remembered, as far as your company and its space go?
David Byrd (News - Alert): This year we announced our Broadvox GO! SIP
Trunking products to meet the growing IP telecommunications needs of the SMB marketplace. A SIP Trunking deployment provides immediate telecom cost savings along with a platform for next-generation SIP services, unified messaging and presence-based applications. As we expand our customer base into the SMB market, we continued to deliver the reliability, security and quality of service required by the world’s most discriminating carriers at a lower price than our competitors. In concert with our expansion effort, we launched a new corporate website, logo to reflect our new product strategy and a nationwide branding and identity program. The website is built to provide product and technical information in a simple to understand format for non-technicians while preserving the technical accuracy for IT professionals.
TMCnet: What can you tell me about your company’s plans for 2008?
Byrd: In 2008, we will continue to build our VAR program to sell our product offering to the SMB and enterprise markets. While our carrier business will represent the bulk of our business, selling SIP Trunking
represents the majority of our future growth. A national marketing campaign launched in October will be continued in 2008 to introduce SMBs to the financial and productivity benefits of SIP Trunking. To further support our new business customers, we have formed a special support and engineering team responsible for the entire contact process from ordering through billing after deployment to provide a higher level of service and satisfaction than our competitors. Our mission is to become the leading provider of SIP Trunking services to SMBs and enterprises in North America and these efforts support that mission.
TMCnet: What were the biggest challenges faced in 2007?
Byrd: During 2007, we observed a level of uncertainty in the telecommunications industry, due in part to some service providers going out of business as a result of overreaching or not gaining an understanding of their target customer base. The growth of IP
communications was also affected by the belief that regulatory bodies might step in but that no longer appears to be the case. These two factors impacted the adoption rate of new service offerings such as SIP Trunking. Our challenge was to successfully launch our SIP Trunking product offering for SMBs in this unstable market and that being accomplished, we expect the growth of IP communications to accelerate as we continue to progress along the adoption curve.
TMCnet: What will be the biggest challenges in the year to come?
Byrd: Telephony is a rapidly changing field with established PBX
vendors revamping their product set, new PBX (News - Alert) vendors coming on board, new solutions around unified communications, call centers and communication-enabled business processes (CEBP). Each of our customers has different requirements and with the products that are now available they have a wide range of solutions from which to choose. Broadvox’s challenge will be to make sure that no matter which one they select we can provide the customized solutions they need while maintaining the highest standards of quality which is expected from a VoIP
industry leader.
TMCnet: What development/event in 2007 had the most impact on the industry?
Byrd: During 2007, the telecommunications industry saw innovators begin building and releasing a broad range of SIP applications, moving from standalone systems to integrating applications based upon unified communications to solve key business needs. These new applications and productivity improvements began forming a long term foundation for IP telephony growth, not only impacting the telecommunications industry but influencing user expectations and opening the door to future developments. The expansion of open source IP PBXs and new application software had the most impact upon IP communications.
Brian Solomon is a Web Editor for TMCnet, covering news in the IP communications, call center and customer relationship management industries. To see more of his articles, please visit Brian Solomon’s columnist page.
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