The global economic downturn has increased the urgency among companies of all sizes to reduce costs and find smarter and more efficient ways to do business. From our perspective, this imperative is moving VoIP and open-source telecom solutions, like IPGENIE UCP, to centre stage.
Clearly, the march to VoIP – among customers and carriers – began before the current worldwide economic crisis. Still, for us and other VoIP providers business is brisk as more and more companies rush to implement VoIP solutions. Enterprise customers in growing numbers are turning to VoIP for inter-branch, intra-company calling while more and more call centre’s, hotels and SMBs (small and mid-sized businesses) rely on it for all inbound and outbound international calls.
Another smarter, less expensive way to do business is open-source telephony – specifically, IPGENIE UCP. So far this year, we’ve noted increased awareness and acceptance of IPGENIE UCP among customers in England & Northern Ireland We’ve even seeing PBX procurements by multinational companies where IPGENIE is being considered side-by-side with Cisco and Avaya.
The reason is simple: IPGENIE is a flexible, scalable and reliable solution that offers the same advanced features and functionality as proprietary PBXs but at a fraction of the cost. For these reasons, IPGENIE now has a seat at the table.
In Europe, we’re also seeing keen interest in IPGENIE but for one additional reason: the large, installed base of Nortel PBX. For many years, Nortel was the PBX that many installed for customers throughout the country. Many of these switches are at or near the end of the product’s life-cycle. Compounding the normal anxiety over switch replacement is Nortel’s bankruptcy filing earlier this year. In the meantime, customers are worried about replacement parts upgrades and service and many of them are turning to IPGENIE.
We expect an even stronger second half of the year in IP PBX. In any case, we believe VoIP is moving to centre stage and IPGENIE is right behind it.