Interview with Peter Sisson, CEO, Toktumi

You are focusing on the SOHO and micro enterprise market. What special requirements does SOHO and micro enterprise segment have that demands a service provider like you dedicated just to them?

They typically do not have a dedicated bandwidth connection. They do not have IT support in-house. And despite that they want to project the image of a large setup. Those requirements will not be served by either the large telcos or those serving the smaller businesses such as Fonality and Packet8. You have to offer solutions that maintain voice quality over low speed connections, are easy to setup and offer features such as auto-attendant etc.

You also offer other enhanced services such as the search dialling feature. How does it work and what does it do basically?

Search dialling lets you dial someone just by searching the name describing who and what you are looking for. It searches your PC based directory and the online directories. Our PC integration lets you do that. Search dialling is simply not possible on standalone phone. PC interface also simplifies several other things such as the conference set up process for instance. Using phones to set the conferences up is a tedious process.

What software and hardware do you use at the backend?

It is a combination of our software and GIPS elements in the data center. The client is all ours. For people who want to use our service with a regular phone, the adaptor we use is a custom design of a standard chipset that is used for USB phones.

What about the feature set? You source that from people like Broadsoft?

No that is actually part of GIPS solution as well. They modified their existing platform. They did not have features like auto-attendant. So we worked together on their new version of software to incorporate those features. The solution was custom designed for us but they are now making it available generally. We are the launch customer for the solution that incorporates hosted PBX features, firewall traversal and the voice quality software.

Your search dialling is a bit of a voice-web mashup. What is your voice-web mashup strategy in general?

Once we are on people’s desktop we can pull in lots of things. We can enhance voicemail by offering something like text preview using Simulscribe. Collaboration tools are an important piece on our roadmap. Business listing services, enhanced and video conferencing, better integration with cell phones. These are some of the services that we are contemplating.

What is your strategy to attract developers?

We want to open up the APIs. We haven’t had a chance to address that aspect yet.

Looking at company like Vonage which is effectively an ASP since they don’t own the last mile, how would you judge the prospects of a company offering over-the-top services such as you do?

Vonage’s trouble does not stem from the fact that they are offering service on top of other companies’ broadband lines. Vonage is trying to offer serve consumers in a market where large companies can offer a bundle. The consumer market is too risky because if I am already using services of Comcast and they try to sell me the VoIP service in addition, I will probably take it. That is the why Vonage is having problems.

And therefore how do you fight that bundle yourself? You are not bringing in the pipe to the customers?

That is why we target very small businesses. Micro businesses are not typically buying TV service, for example, as part of their business services. The only bundling that may occur for small business is internet. And we seek to partner with ISPs to provide those solutions to small companies. Right now ISPs are offering VoIP services but they are for 10 seats and higher and the ISPs that I have spoken with, they really do not have a good solution for the smallest of enterprises. We offer a program where ISPs can resell our service to their micro enterprise customers.

Are you going to be using internet mostly to market your services?

Our model works well with referral type programs because people can act instantly. They can download the software and try it rather than have to talk to a sales rep. Referral programs don’t work well when you refer people to a phone number because they wont call.

Have you raised any funding so far?

We have $1.5 million in angel funding in the company and we now seeking our first venture round of $7 million.