Interview with Alec Saunders, CEO, Iotum

The underlying theme in your products seems presence, and presence integrated with public networks. Are we ready for presence integration with something like PSTN and public cellular networks?

I think the bigger question is integration of presence with applications and not the networks. When we started out we used to go out there and say we have an application for your networks when really we should have been saying we have solution that applies presence to your applications. So for instance we have built conference calling application for Facebook that uses some presence features. That has generated a substantial amount of interest and is acquiring users at a fairly quick rate. It is much more successful than anything we have done in past. So the lesson learnt was that presence is applicable to lots of places and it is just the matter of bringing it to those places.

Your Talk-Now for Blackberry and Relevance Engine product lines are two different products in the sense that one is for consumers and other for operators or OEM vendors. How do you plan to handle both consumers and operators as customers?

We are not focussed on targeting operator customers at this point of time. It is long ritual to sign up an operator. In the end we decided to provide the service to end users directly.

Any figures you can share with us about your Talk-Now downloads so far?

We haven’t announced publicly about Talk-Now downloads but I can tell you our Facebook downloads has exceeded 90,000 users.

You will most probably sell Relevance Engine on a licensed basis. What is the revenue model for Talk-Now application?

Revenue model for Talk Now is the actual application itself. It is free presence component on top of which we will attach new services. For example Talk Now will eventually have conference calling service attached to it.

Do you think there is room to insert ads using your technology and thus generate revenues?

Sure, supplemental revenue stream or replacement revenue stream … it doesn’t really matter. We have looked at those things and I think putting the ad media holds an enormous promise to monetise the voice applications in the future.

Companies like Dynamicsoft also attempted to do presence integration with PSTN and GSM networks. What is the difference between the approach of those Voice 1.0 companies and Voice 2.0 companies like yourself?

It is all about timing. The whole Voice 2.0 ethos is about intersection of networks and we as end users have bigger expectations of what we will be able to do with the convergence of networks. Users are more prepared and ready at this moment of time to look at these kinds of services than they were five years ago.

My observation is that one of the differences between Voice 1.0 and Voice 2.0 companies is that companies like you are bypassing the operator and going direct to consumer to popularize the software capabilities. Is that a conscious strategy of Voice 2.0 companies in order to market themselves in front of the operators?

I would jump at an opportunity if I recognize chance to launch a service in a reasonable amount of time frame and where I can make a reasonable amount of money. Operator business model is to spend two to three years or sometimes longer to bring a service into the market and then pay the solution provider pennies for it. There is no point having a discussion with them. I am going straight to the end user.

Conferencing is the underlying technology for many Voice 2.0 offerings such as yours, and mirror numbers offered by the likes of Rebtel, and callback offered by Jajah. What other new applications can we expect conferencing to produce going forward?

Our conferencing application is being used for podcasting, being used for hosting a talk radio show etc. The hottest area on the web in terms of communication at the moment is collaboration and conferencing is central to it.

What will be the impact of the emergence of Voice 2.0 vendors on legacy vendors like Nortel and Ericsson? Are they facing a threat here?

If they do nothing, then yes it is a major competitive threat. What is true is that Voice 2.0 applications come to market faster than the traditional legacy networks allow. I don’t think the legacy vendors will do nothing. I am sure companies like Nortel will either acquire companies that can provide them expertise or deliver the platform of their own which are capable of implementing those technologies. Then there is a vast ecosystem of developers that they can tap into. In the world of legacy networks, the number of software developers can be measured in thousands but in the world of web services we have millions developing the applications today.