Interview with Ivar Plahte, CEO, OnRelay
You are one of very few FMC vendors that do not care about the WiFi part. Why is that?
We did not start with the WiFi-GSM handover solution. We were always focused on extending PBX features on to the cell phone. We never approached the market with the WiFi angle. You must have noticed that in enterprise FMC, there has been a shift from plain handover to extension of features on to cell phones. That in a way substantiates our market positioning. FMC in enterprises is not about saving costs by routing calls over WiFi.
But FMC and mobile PBX can save costs on calls. Why not highlight that aspect?
Yes, you will see most of our competitors pushing savings on mobile calls as one of the key drivers for mobile PBX. And we too did that early on. But we realized fast that the savings are really not big enough, if any at all. When you drive the use of mobile telephony in the business segment you actually drive up the talk time. So even if you could do some toll bypass and WiFi substitution what we see in effect is that mobile bill remains roughly the same.
How do you position your product then?
We go in with a bolder proposition. We get rid of the IP extensions. We make mobile phone your only phone.
Can you take me through the technical process through which you make the PBX-bound phone call ring on your cell phone, or just how you achieve simultaneous ring?
That stuff is IPR protected. But you can get some idea by reading the US Patent 6993360 details. I can give you an overview. It is a client-server software system. The server is either integrated or embedded with the PBX. The client sits on the mobile phone itself. We use the existing voice path over GSM between PBX and mobile phone but signaling is sent over different data path which can be public internet.
Your client does not work with a lot of mobile handsets.
Yes. It is a very complex client. It has to support a lot of features and support existing cell phone applications on the handset. That is one of the weak points in a lot of FMC deployments. The client part is taken very lightly by most vendors. For us, the client is a very important piece of software which determines the feature mix that is available to you.
Doesn’t that limit your deployments a little?
Of course it does. Smartphones are only now starting to get traction. But the issue is what features you make available to the users. Bear in mind that in enterprise it is a bit different. They have been buying stuff like Backberries in bulk.
You sell mainly via the operators and somewhat compete with the PBX vendors. Can you tell us a bit about that?
We tried to work with PBX vendors in early days. Their concern is how to sell more PBX extensions. Our technology eliminates those extensions in many cases. So there is an obvious clash of interest.
What are the main market drivers for Mobile PBX?
You will hear vendors talk about the ability to save money by WiFi substitution and all that. For us, productivity is the main driver: making PBX available 100%, wherever you are. More important that, we are able to get rid of your IP extensions. So we are effectively saving on some infrastructure costs.
Do you have any commercial deployments of your product?
Yes we have had commercial deployments for the last two years now. Swisscom is one of our customers. Their OnePhone offering is based on our platform In Europe things have advanced a bit more as compared to the US. In the US we have only just started some pilot projects.
Are there any provisioning issues related to your solution?
Nothing more than provisioning related to an average communications systems. There is no user entry. When you install software on your handset, it automatically registers with the system based on the server settings.
