September 07, 2007
Small Business Are Not Mid-Sized Businesses
By Rich Tehrani, President and Editor-in-Chief
I recently talked to Natural Convergence ( News - Alert) about the company’s new corporate initiatives and the effect of SIP on communications.
Natural Convergence is focused on the small business market and empowering service providers to reach that underserved market as never before. Read more about it here.
What do you want the industry to know about your company?
Natural Convergence is focused on the small business market. While others often lump it with medium business as an SMB category, Natural Convergence understands and appreciates that the small business market is a unique one with its own characteristics. We are dedicated to enabling service providers to profitably serve the diverse needs of small business.
Please outline your new corporate initiatives. How is IP communications changing your company’s strategy?
Natural Convergence has been focused on VoIP from the start and has been at the forefront in VoIP for many years. Our genesis has been providing applications to spur broadband access acceptance by small business. We continue to expand our focus on empowering small business; most recently by addressing the need to tie the remote worker to the office.
Natural Convergence is dedicated to building an ecosystem of like-minded partners with the best in class applications such as conferencing, soft clients, and call routing.
How has SIP changed communications?
SIP has greatly reduced the barriers of interoperability between vendor products, allowing service providers to take advantage of new products more quickly and with less risk in deploying multi-vendor solutions.
What is the biggest request coming from your customer base?
The request Natural Convergence has received most frequently from our customers concerns the mobile worker and tying the mobile worker into the office, allowing flexibility for small business operations.
How are you answering their demands?
In the latest Natural Convergence product release, we are providing a collection of features specifically enabling mobile and teleworker capabilities.
What do you think the future of the market is?
The small business market is THE niche market segment. Natural Convergence is focused on the small business VoIP market, specifically the 5-50 seat segment. This segment is now rapidly growing. In the U.S., there are 32 million legacy Key System lines that are ripe for replacement. Small businesses are able to take advantage of efficiencies and cost improvements of VoIP and particularly hosted services.
How is your growth in the U.S. and elsewhere?
Natural Convergence is doubling its licenses in use every six months; our business model is proven and repeatable and we confidently predict we will continue to do so. We have been experiencing significant growth in all of our regions: North America, Europe, and the Caribbean.
What do you think of Google and Apple entering the telecom market?
Google and Apple entering the telecom market further validate the market opportunity and the market maturity. The arrival of these new players in telecom creates urgency for existing incumbent and competitive service providers to offer better service to their customer bases… services like as Natural Convergence’s silhouette Hosted Key System.
How about Microsoft?
The telecom market is a lucrative market. Microsoft is a further proof point that non-traditional voice vendors, just as non-traditional voice service providers, are entering this market because voice is the precious media by which we all want to communicate.
How will wireless technologies change our market?
Wireless changes everything. Wireless technologies provide mobility of service and flexibility for subscribers. For our customers, the service providers, it means there are new ways for them to reach small business via WiFi and WiMAX . This has the potential to change the economics for competitive service providers. Furthermore, people want to be reachable the days of a separate phone number for your cell phone and your office phone are over. Just call my work number and I will answer your call wherever I am.
How will communications evolve over the next five years?
Users are gaining choices — choices in service providers, choices in features, and choices in mobility — all resulting in the fulfillment of the Internet’s promise of ‘my service at my location.’
What sorts of things will we be hearing about during your presentation at ITEXPO (News - Alert)?
Three reasons why hosted VoIP will make big business out of small business — and one reason why it won’t. Our presentation will explore which factors are aligned to make an amazing business opportunity out of the small business market, and why you will miss the wave if you ignore one last factor — the channel.
Why is your presentation a “Can’t Miss?”
Our presentation will show service providers another way to make money — by serving the small business market. We can tell them how to do it, why it will work, and what they had better know going into it. Our credibility is based on years of research in the small business market. The proven track record of Natural Convergence’s success in reaching this market segment is based on the expertise of its people. We are industry experts and took our knowledge and applied it a presentation that is insightful, informative, and thought provoking.
Please make one surprising prediction we will see in 5 years
Google works jointly with the Top 50 metro areas to deploy WiFi. Google ties all of these metros together with its fiber purchases. Google starts a CLEC offering Google Talk in all these cities and teams with Motorola ( News - Alert) to provide a cheap urban phone.
Green is the new black. At least, that’s the case in the communications industry where companies are finding that using green technology is not only good for the planet but good for business as well. Want to learn more about how being green can make money? Mark your calendar now for TMC’s first annual Green Technology World Conference, Sept. 11-12, 2007 at the Los Angeles Convention Center in California. Preview the show schedule, speakers and exhibitors—then register to attend. Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC) | X | CLEC is a local non-incumbent telephone company....more |
Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) | X | As a sister technology to Wi-Fi, the IEEE 802.16 specification outlines technology for Wireless Metro Area Network (MAN). WiMAX actually stands for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, whi...more |
Internet Protocol (IP) | X | IP stands for Internet Protocol, a data-networking protocol developed throughout the 1980s. It is the established standard protocol for transmitting and receiving data
in packets over the Internet. I...more |
Voice over IP (VoIP) | X | A real-time communications system that converts voice into digital packets containing media and signaling data that travel over networks using Internet Protocol....more |
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) | X | SIP is the real-time communication protocol for VoIP. SIP is a signaling protocol for Internet conferencing, telephony, presence, events notification (emergency calling) and instant messaging.
SIP...more |
(source: http://businessvoip.tmcnet.com//topics/benefits/articles/10501-small-business-not-mid-sized-businesses.htm)
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