BroadVoice Talks Innovation: ITEXPO West 2014

By Susan J. Campbell
TMCnet Contributing Editor

Few can imagine doing business without the help of Microsoft. Whether the company’s software powers office documents, the email server or supporting Unified Communications, Microsoft has a strong foothold in the industry. Still, does that mean that Microsoft Lync is dominating when it comes to communications or is this merely the perception? To get the scoop, TMCnet reached out to industry experts for their opinion.

BroadVoice (News - Alert) has been in the space for quite some time, providing companies and individuals with the opportunity to leverage a high speed broadband connection to support voice communications. Simply put, the BroadVoice adapter connects your phone to your router and you’re ready to make clear calls with low cost. It really is that easy.

To share more of what the company is doing in this space, CEO Jim Murphy plans to be on hand at this year’s ITEXPO. In preparation for the show, Murphy shared some insight with TMC’s Rich Tehrani (News - Alert). When asked why Microsoft Lync is gaining so much traction in the industry, Murphy showed that he isn’t quite as impressed with the perceived momentum as others.

“Microsoft can slap their name on a stick of wood, and their brand name alone would guarantee a couple hundred thousand sales,” Murphy said. “However we’re not seeing Lync gaining that much traction yet. It’s been a buzz word in our industry for the last couple years. But we’re only seeing adoption in the largest installations. It hasn’t seemed to trickle down into the mid-tier as much. I think they stumbled out of the gate on their initial launch and are just now starting to gain back some momentum.” 

As a company that is also focused on the mobile space with apps that allow for international calling, Find Me Follow Me capabilities and more, the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement is certainly on the radar for BroadVoice. One trend that seems apparent, however, is that without huge evolutionary leaps in handsets over the last few years, customers are more likely to stick with existing Cisco (News - Alert) and Polycom handsets when evaluating IP-PBX and hosted PBX providers.

Still, social media through mobile devices is impacting the company and its customers. Murphy explains, “We are seeing a huge increase this year on customer contact through social media. More and more customers want to interact with our customer care group through Twitter (News - Alert), much to our surprise. This is showing a growing technical sophistication on the part of customers.”

Like other technology companies, the cloud is top of mind for BroadVoice as well. According to Murphy, the company has started moving some of its website front-ends to the cloud and is currently in trials to archive non-sensitive data in the private cloud so as to avoid continuous expansion of the disk shelves in its data center. Sensitive customer data has not yet made its way to the cloud as BroadVoice is relying on this strategy only to the point that it has a data recovery plan in place should the cloud fail.

As BroadVoice continues to innovate in the communications space, users at all levels are likely to be affected for the better. To know for sure, check out the company’s booth and latest solutions at ITEXPO (News - Alert) August 11-14 at The Rio, Las Vegas.

Edited by Stefania Viscusi