Managing the Changes in the Telecom Market: ITEXPO West Interview

The enterprise communications market is one of the fastest moving industries in technology, and will be a major focus at ITEXPO West 2011, which is set to kick off tomorrow, Sept. 13 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas.

With this in mind, TMC CEO Rich Tehrani reached out to a few major players in the business telephony solutions market to get a better feel for some of the trends that will be discussed at the upcoming show. Tehrani recently caught up with Eran Gal, CEO and co-founder of Xorcom, a provider of open source, Asterisk (News - Alert)-based enterprise and SMB telephony solutions for both traditional PSTN and VoIP communication.

In the below interview, Gal details the ever-changing telecom market, which sees new products and fresh entrants into the space every day. However, the speed of innovation has still not changed what business customers are looking for, says Gal: a reliable and honest technology partner.

Gal believes that the biggest challenge in today's market is managing and distributing data, which is becoming difficult to control due to the sheer size and complexity of our current systems.

In addition, Gal sees a move toward an increasingly decentralized and mobile workforce, which has boosted demand for multi-location systems that come equipped with remote extensions, video phones, presence and many other features.

“The capability of creating a virtual PBX over several different offices, routing the customer to the right person in the right part of the world at the right time is becoming increasingly important,” he told Tehrani.

As for the mobile operating systems war, Gal envisions that iOS and Android will continue to dominate, but he has better hopes for Google's (News - Alert) mobile OS due to its open source model. He will also be keeping an eye out for Microsoft, which recently spent around $8 billion to integrate Skype into its software offerings.

The Xorcom (News - Alert) team will be on hand at ITEXPO West 2011 to catch up with current and prospective customers and anyone who is interested in Asterisk-based telephony solutions. Check out booth #519 for more information.

The complete interview is below.

How has your market segment evolved over the past year and what trends have fueled those changes?

The telecom market has been changing very quickly due to the accelerated speed of technological developments. As a result, we see: changes in the business models and the business environment, changes in the competition base, and changes in customers' perceptions. While the product offerings change very quickly, the importance of relationships, reliability and integrity in business is greater than ever. While new companies and products pop-up every day, the channel is looking for companies they can trust in good times and bad, and this is not achieved as quickly as the rate technology moves.

This year we are expecting over 40 percent growth in sales relative to 2010, maintaining our record of continual year-to-year growth since we introduced our first products at the beginning of 2006. Our professional and dedicated channel partners play the main role in this accomplishment. 

What do you see as the next disruptive force in technology and how will it impact your market or business?

Well, the nature of disruptive forces is that they are not easily visible, but let me try to point to the direction from which I think these changes may come. Today, as all systems are becoming bigger and more complex in every field, they are very hard to manage.   We have technology that can provide us with a lot of data, but how to distribute it, manage it and make decisions, automatically or by the right person who has the right data, is the real challenge.

Another big challenge we are now facing is the rapid change in the very structure of society – factors such as longevity, declining birth rates and increased mobility change the very base of society. We are about to face problems of dealing with a high percentage of senior citizens with a smaller proportion of young people to support them. Apart from the structural changes in society itself, technological solutions will be required to support this effort.

What is the most common request you are seeing from your customers? How is your company addressing these demands?

We see increased demand for multi-location systems. We saw a leap this year in the implementations of multi-national companies and companies with many branches that are adopting our solutions. Again, due to the technology, medium and even small-sized companies today may have locations in more than one country, since the cost of supporting technology has significantly decreased over the last few years.

We have no difficulty addressing these demands, since our hybrid PSTN + VoIP business telephony solutions support all of the most common telephony interfaces and trunks, are easy to install, and can be centrally managed through a secure, remote Web interface.

Another growing demand is from vendors who integrate our products as part of a bigger solution, or run their applications over our platforms. Here again, there is no challenge, since our entire product line is based on an open source platform – Asterisk – which ensures ease of integration for third party products.

How is the continued growth of social media changing service and product development strategies?

The conversation is now wide open and everyone can join. We are encouraging our partners and customers to join our social networks and share their opinions and tips with each other. Some of the best ideas for products we now have come from such open conversations, and social media is basically just a set of tools that makes it easier and more accessible for many to share their experiences with us, the manufacturer, as well as with their colleagues and customers.

Also, some customers who might be hesitant to voice a complaint directly to their account representative see airing the grievance on social media as an alternative. In our opinion this is totally legitimate, so we continuously monitor social media to detect such conversations and address these concerns from a manufacturer’s viewpoint. It is yet another way we support our channel, while showing Xorcom customers that we are committed to their success as well.

As businesses continue their move toward virtual workforces, how are you meeting the need for increased mobility?  What barriers are keeping others from adopting mobile strategies?

As I mentioned before, we do witness these trends and the new communication needs that come with them. Our systems support multi-location, remote extensions, video phones, presence and many other features which are all very important to keep the virtual workforce synchronized. 

The capability of creating a virtual PBX over several different offices, routing the customer to the right person in the right part of the world at the right time is becoming increasingly important. 

How do you see the mobile operating system war (iPhone vs. Android vs. RIM vs. WM7) playing out?

It looks like MS came out with a very promising system, but it will be very difficult to get significant market share at this stage, when a big part of the market is almost religious about their mobile OS. A big question mark is the purchase of Skype (News - Alert) by MS, for the legendary sum of $8 billion. If they spent so much money they must have had a strategic plan in place, and there is a good chance it is related to the mobile OS, as this is where they are trailing behind today.

Android and iPhone will continue to lead. For the long run I firmly believe in Android’s superiority, since it is built in a distributed fashion while iPhone uses centralized R&D and business models. This means that if Apple (News - Alert) makes a mistake, it may be difficult to recover, while with Android there is no single point of failure.

What are you most looking forward to at ITEXPO West in Austin? What do you see as being the biggest trends at the show?

As always, for Xorcom the most interesting part is meeting the people who make the market. It is a great opportunity to witness up close the changing requirements, the new trends and the potential joint ventures.

Who should visit your booth at ITEXPO and why?

We invite integrators who are looking for a reliable communications system from a highly innovative company to stop by our booth (#519). The fact that our products are based on Asterisk open source PBX is attractive to many, and we provide the unique combination of an open system with a vendor that stands behind it. In addition, companies that have Asterisk based applications and are looking for a high quality hardware platform to run them on would definitely be interested in what we have to offer.

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2011, taking place Sept. 13-15, 2011, in Austin, Texas. ITEXPO offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. To register, click here.

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Beecher Tuttle is a TMCnet contributor. He has extensive experience writing and editing for print publications and online news websites. He has specialized in a variety of industries, including health care technology, politics and education. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Jennifer Russell