At the recent ITEXPO West 2010 in Los Angeles, Calif., TMC’s (News - Alert) Executive Editor Erin Harrison met with Aksys Networks’ (News - Alert) chief marketing officer, Mike Tourigny, to see how a company like Aksys is serving the small office home office (SOHO) space.

To give TMCnet readers a glimpse of Aksys products, Tourigny first talked about the company’s two key business communications product platforms, the server-less KONNECT office phone system with plug-and-play simplicity and business quality features,and KONNECT business phones that offer the same ease-of-use along with the tightest handset integration for SIP-based PBX (News - Alert) deployments.

Tourigny was next asked by Harrison to describe the scalability and flexibility afforded by the Aksys products to small businesses. Specifically, he said that for a small business or office, every investment is a big one. Taking that into consideration, “Our KONNECT phone system allows them to grow from one phone to 30 across multiple locations seamlessly without additional hardware,” stated Tourigny.  

It is a pretty crowded market, so the TMC executive editor wanted to know how Aksys was differentiating itself from the crowd. “In that space not having to invest in a PBX system is a big differentiator,” said Tourigny.

“With built-in software and all the intelligence required, our phone systems are easy to configure and easily connect to the Internet to work across multiple locations and offices,” noted Tourigny. “And allows them to grow flexibly and cost effectively.”

When asked about the company’s plan for 2011 and the future, Tourigny promptly said that Aksys will continue to add new features to the KONNECT product lines. For instance, he pointed to music on hold as a new feature built into the system. It enables the KONNECT office phone system to play customized greetings or messages to callers when they are placed on hold. To activate music on hold, the KONNECT office phone system quickly uploads a recording to the phone through Web configuration pages. Likewise, he continued, many such features important to small businesses will be added on a regular basis.

Additionally, going forward, the company has plans to invest more time and energy on KONNECT business phones, which has been optimized for integration with a SIP PBX, and more specifically for Asterisk (News - Alert). With the insertion of an Asterisk PBX, the system can scale up to hundreds of lines. More such integration features for growth is on the minds of executives of Aksys.