The benefits of VoIP, while already apparent to many users across the globe, have taken on a special focus in the business world this past year as economic uncertainty loomed and decision makers fought to cut costs and remain successful.

Ontario-based Phybridge (News - Alert) answered to this need with the Uniphyer, a VoIP Enabler product that provides an instant, dedicated path for voice to every desktop and uses existing telephony cabling to do so.

“The Phybridge UniPhyer enables IP phones to achieve the reliability and voice clarity of traditional phone systems without sacrificing any of the benefits of IP Phones,” company officials explained.

According to recent research from Infonetics (News - Alert), the VoIP services market will reach an upwards of $76 billion in revenues by 2015 – lead by SIP trunking and hosted business VoIP services. The research also noted that the number of seats for hosted business VoIP and UC services will more than double between 2011 and 2015.To find out a little more about Phybridge and their VoIP Enabler and what the company has in store for the upcoming year, I took some time to chat with CEO, John Croce. Our exchange follows.

Looking back at 2011, can you highlight some of the most important advancements or trends that emerged in the market you serve?  What were the key trends that impacted your business?

With the economic uncertainty that exists in the market, many businesses decision making process and influence is changing.  Many technology investments are being scrutinized to ensure an attractive return on investment.  What we are seeing is more involvement by management outside the technology department taking interest in decisions being made.

What were your company’s biggest achievements/announcements in the past year?

Phybridge has benefited by the trend of businesses looking at technology decisions from a business perspective.  The Phybridge UniPhyer is a game changing technology that was designed to solve complex and costly converged LAN readiness challenges in a simple and cost effective manner. 

The data switch industry imposed the methodology of layering voice on a data switch fabric making every IP phone act as a switch for the data device connected to it.  The Phybridge UniPhyer allows customers to transform their existing voice infrastructure into an IP network with power eliminating the risk, disruption and a significant amount of the costs to optimize the LAN for convergence.

Looking back at 2011, how would you characterize the year for your company?

Our biggest achievement was partnering with Siemens (News - Alert) Enterprise allowing them to use the Phybridge UniPhyer to eliminate LAN barriers and win one of their largest deals in U.S. history – over 57,000 users.  The pilot went without issue and roll-out is starting next month.   Another highlight was helping a large financial institution in Chicago with over 1,400 users save over $1.5 million in LAN readiness costs.  This company was told that it would cost them over $1.8 million dollars to do all the need changes to the LAN to migrate to IP telephony. 

One of our partners introduced the UniPhyer to the IT team and they piloted the UniPhyer.  Savings of over $1.5 million and project fast track by approximately one year given the simplicity of the UniPhyer deployment. Nothing more gratifying than helping customers save this kind of money.

What are your predictions for 2012 for the VoIP and communications market?

The beginning of industry acceptance with big customer wins.  Every disruptive technology goes through a phase of proving its value to both the customer and industry partners.  2011 was that year - partners are no longer questioning if the technology works and there are thousands of satisfied customers.

‘Cloud’ has been a pretty hot topic this year and seems to continue gaining steam – do you feel this will continue into 2012 and what are some of your thoughts around the future of cloud technology?

We strongly believe that the Cloud will continue to grow and we are very excited about the opportunity for Phybridge.  In the world of Cloud-based telephony, many providers assume away the challenges of lighting up the end point that may be 10 floors and a few hundred users away ensuring Quality of service and a great user experience. 

The UniPhyer solves the problem when the cloud hits the building.  The UniPhyer leverages the existing voice infrastructure and can light up every IP phone quickly and easily.   You will see a lot more from Phybridge with Cloud based partners.

What can we look forward to from your company in 2012?

We will be introducing some new technology that we believe will shatter the paradigm of layering voice on the data LAN.  This solution is so customer centric that we believe customers will set the new standard of converging once centrally with the data LAN vs. an industry imposed methodology of layering voice on a data LAN with every IP phone acting as a switch for the data device connected to it.  Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication.