In profile: An interview with Swyx CEO Günter Junk

Swyx’s software-based IP telephony system provide users – regardless of their location – with multi-featured business telephony functionality that integrates a variety of other communications media types (e.g. e-mail, instant messaging, fixed-mobile and video) to the desktop – all of which are capable of integration with core business processes and applications such as CRM, ERP and billing.

With its background in IP telephony, the company also provides a solid management framework, meaning that functionality can be rolled out by individual user or the user group/community (user centric approach).

CXO. Gunter, can you tell me more about this?

GJ. Well, for example, marketing, sales and IT, each with different needs, can get the communications environment that suits them best and this environment can be deployed to communities rather than based on physical location. This contrasts with the majority of systems on the market today that are location-centric, meaning that everybody receives the same functionality regardless of their individual requirements based on the physical location of the PBX.

The Swyx solution will be available to own or as an ‘on-demand’ service that can be sourced from a local ISP, on a ‘pay-as-you-go’ hosted telephony basis.

CXO. So why is this ‘so much more than a telephone system?’ and is it future proof?

GJ. The Swyx solution is based on software, not hardware, and like all other software systems can be easily upgraded indefinitely as new features and versions are developed. Unlike traditional telephone systems, Swyx integrates seamlessly with an existing IT infrastructure, including all individual business applications such as security systems, office applications, Finance, CRM and customer support infrastructure. This approach delivers a single communication system that will move and grow with a business no matter how many people, sites or locations in the future, improving user productivity and integrating voice into the business process.

CXO. Since the company was established in 1999, how has the IP telephony sector developed?

GJ. Since this time, the installation of IP lines have overtaken circuit switched lines and traditional telephony, as we know it, is in its final death throes. Leading analysts, such as Gartner, MZA and Canalys, predict that by 2009 the traditional PBX market is set to decline by around 40 percent with the IP-enabled PBX market declining by 5-6 percent over the same period. It’s now clear that the future is in pure IP telephony solutions such as ours, for which the adoption levels continue to rise.

Free or low-cost consumer offerings from companies such as Skype have helped raise the awareness of IP telephony, although these types of systems provide very little in the way of business functionality. Today, most of our potential customers accept that IP is the only choice when selecting a new telephone system. Moving forward, the trend is now to look at business voice and communications as a software service alongside the traditional method of delivery on-premise, and we are also seeing the emergence of hosted voice and on-demand voice services into the market.

CXO. What is your standing in Europe today and how do you plan on maintaining that position?

GJ. A recent report by leading analysts MZA showed Swyx to be the market leader across Western Europe for businesses deploying less than 100 lines. The company continues to stay ahead of the market in terms of technology. We currently have a number of market-leading developments well under way that will makes our customers’ lives easier and give their businesses increased competitive advantage. In particular, the capability of Swyx to integrate into business applications and customise it to the business environment makes it particularly attractive to smaller businesses looking to maximise the use of their communications systems in their business. For example, the ease of setup of Swyx, the integration into the desktop and the simplicity and capability of user mobility are key requirements for small businesses today.

Our partners are also key to the company’s growth. Service providers, IT hosting companies, application service providers and traditional voice and data VARs all take Swyx, and combine it with their portfolios to offer value added voice and communication solutions to their customers. It is the company’s ability to be offered as a customer premise application (CPA), hosted or on-demand solution that makes this possible.

CXO. So what are the main reasons a company should consider changing its telephone system?

GJ. There are many drivers for change. We recently conducted an on-line poll of why SMEs were considering IP telephony. While cost-savings were still a major factor, they were seen not only as a result of cheaper calls, but also through the productivity and efficiency gains that IP telephony offers, such as flexible working, improved customer service and so on.

A close second to cost was the increased functionality that IP telephony can offer over and above traditional TDM phone systems. Many companies are now keen to install IP telephony so they can benefit from productivity enhancing features such as:

• Integrated email and contacts
• Integrated video, instant messaging and collaboration tools
• Application sharing
• Multimedia conferencing
• Business process and application integration (e.g. CRM, billing and email)
• Tele-presence (knowing who is ‘logged-in’ and available)
• Central management framework

There is also demand from CEOs for increasing functionality from their corporate communications. These systems are moving out of the comms room and into the boardroom, with people beginning to understand the competitive advantage they can offer.

Another key factor is the demand for ‘people centric’ rather than ‘location centric’ communications, so that employees, wherever they are, have the same access to information and communications as they would in the office.

The ability to integrate ‘voice’ with other back office applications is also key and means that companies need to look at software-based IP telephony, because it is the only technology that will support this. None of the above are possible with an old TDM based PBX.

FOUR KEY TRENDS – THE EVOLUTION OF IP COMMUNICATIONS

There are four key trends emerging that culminate in what Swyx refers to as ‘Communications Architecture’.

People centric communications – The communications system of yesterday – the PBX – was a piece of hardware that was fundamentally a location-centric piece of physical equipment. It was highly dependent on its physical position for its deployment and its services rollout, in part because all users were subject to features functions and changes regardless of whether they needed them or not. Also, upgrades were performed on a site-by-site basis, rather than on a community or user-type basis, which resulted in a very unproductive method of telephony deployment.

The trend toward business productivity processes and a user’s demand for more choice means that the model for communications now has to change from being location-centric to user-centric.

Value versus commodity – Traditionally, the terms value and commodity have been synonymous in telecommunications. Price was the most important criteria in the buying decision and the value was assumed as a given. This, however is no longer the case, a gap is emerging between value and price and this will transform itself in the near future to a two-tier model for communications procurement. Interestingly, businesses will not necessarily choose one model exclusively, and in particular the small business segment is likely to employ a mix of technologies to best suit their needs.

Control versus choice – Security, management and control (SMC) is a key requirement of any IT infrastructure, but in bringing together disparate technologies under an umbrella of ‘unified communications’ can mean that SMC requirements can be overlooked, addressed as an afterthought or indeed compromised altogether. Another scenario is that they are so tightly integrated to a specific device that it is not possible to embrace the benefits of open systems or the federated interaction with other external sources.

The answer is to move to a solution that has been fundamentally designed around a defined ‘Scope of Control’, that can be centralised, but also operated across distributed architectures. This is a necessity for future software or application/web based services. This concept brings into the IT and Desktop environment, the centralised control elements that were previously the main strength of the traditional voice PBX, but in addition provides the end user some control over their personal communications mix. For the IT manager, this means that a centralised control mechanism is maintained over the provision of services, security, applications and interfaces, on a user or user group/community level, with the ability to allow or disallow users from specific actions.

Delivery – The final trend concerns the delivery mechanisms for these new forms of business communications. Traditionally, vendors sold customer premise equipment (CPE) products, either directly or through channel sales partners, who would then deliver it to the user’s physical location.

However, this is changing. As non-traditional voice vendors enter the market they will start to offer an integrated applications approach by constructing their business models on areas such as client advertising, subscription services or SaaS (Software as a Service) models, and many new entrants are predicted to offer voice as a hosted or on-demand software. This approach is likely to be more favourable to vendors who already operate on this model (for example, Salesforce.com has now moved exclusively to an on-demand model for its CRM solutions), and as more software/applications vendors and traditional Systems Integrators enter the communications market, this is likely be the deployment model of choice.

BIO
Günter Junk, CEO, joined Swyx’s management team in January 2005. Prior to this he spent 10 years at Cisco where he held a number of senior management positions including VP Sales, Managing Director for Cisco Systems Germany and more recently Chief Operations Officer for EMEA. Here he was responsible for all sales operations and product marketing across the region. Prior to this Günter has held a number of senior sales management positions in his 10 years at Hewlett Packard.

A CASE IN POINT
I’Ansons, a manufacturer of animal foodstuffs, has vastly improved its ordering efficiency and reduced costs by integrating its Swyx solution with its order processing and manufacturing ERP system.

The company’s challenges included:

• An out-dated telephone system that was expensive to maintain
• A slow manual order processing system that could not react quickly to customer demand
• Major peaks and troughs in its manufacturing cycles.

After the implementation the company achieved:

• By fully integrating Swyx into a new CRM system, it greatly improved order-processing time, and allows calls to be re-directed throughout the organisation regardless of location without the need for the customer to re-dial.
• Reduced number of missed calls – call distribution resulted in reduced call times and fewer missed calls that helped level out peaks and troughs.
• Increased order processing accuracy – the option to use call recording functionality to provide an enhanced audit trail for accurate order processing
• Connected the organisation – provided the ability to implement new voice-based time and attendance system, and add Wi-Fi/GSM connectivity throughout the organisation
• Lowered administration costs significantly – reduced administration costs and improved overall productivity by integrating with CRM and ERP systems.
• Vastly improved customer service and improved its competitive advantage.