Interview with Donovan Jones, CEO, CounterPath
Over the last two years you seem to have shifted focus from PC centric communications to mobile centric communications. What opportunities do you see on the mobile side?
Many of our customers are mobile operators as well. So unifying the user experience across desktop and mobile is a big opportunity for us. Apart from the service providers we also have our OEM partners like Nortel collaborating with us across our desktop and mobile product offerings.
You have invested in FMC and handover technologies through the Firsthand and Bridgeport acquisitions. What are the prospects of handover technologies once wireless broadband becomes ubiquitous?
The FMC and handover technologies turn the Internet into a large roaming network. That is very valuable for a service provider. It also enables a service provider to offload a lot of voice traffic over to IP. So from a service provider standpoint there are several benefits at this stage. This kind of technology also facilitates a lot of new wireless data services.
How far have the Firsthand and Bridgeport acquisitions been assimilated into your other product lines? And are there going to be further acquisitions?
We have had two new deployments that involve 3 of the 4 solutions acquired by us. So the integration of the acquired solutions has been satisfactory. There are more things we can enable through a more tighter integration: things like mobile centrex and widgets for various features. We are working on those bits. We were partners with these companies before we acquired them. We validated the prospects of joint products with our existing customers prior to the acquisitions.
On the acquisitions front, making three acquisitions in nine months is a huge task. We grew from 50 people to 150 within a year. So we have to be careful. But if they make sense and they have interesting solutions around mobile, identity, presence, and they add value to our existing customer base and strategy, we are prepared to consider. But it is not going to be our big focus for the next two quarters.
There is a new breed of mobile VoIP companies like Truphones and iSkoots offering services direct to the consumer but also productizing their platforms and licensing them out to cell operators. How do you plan to compete with such companies?
These companies are our joint competitors. They compete with us as well as with our customers. That makes it easy for us to compete with them. Our strategy so far has been to leverage our relationship with the service providers on the desktop client side for building a bridge between broadband PC and mobile phones of their customers. We effectively help the service providers compete with these new players. Having said that the new mobile VoIP companies are also our potential customers.
Are you also exploring opportunities in Voice 2.0 segment? Can this segment be a potential market for you?
Yes, we have been working with a number of these companies. We have taken the partnership approach with these Voice 2.0 companies. The opportunities with these guys is interesting and growing.
You must be also bringing them on board your developer program. Can you tell us a bit about your developer program?
We have a program that is tactically focused now. We will be broadening it over the next two quarters. But it is going to stay focused on building services on top of our desktop client. Looking at the customer demand, we need to prioritize our developer program.
You can also be an ideal vendor candidate for service providers offer virtual PBX services to micro enterprises (off the Web). Since you have mobile UC capability now [through your acquistions] you can help them mobilize those PBX features. Are you targeting those service providers at all?
Yes. This is something that interests us. We have so far focused on the 50-seats entities through Nortels and NECs. But micro enterprise is also a big segment.
You can also become a service provider yourself or perhaps spin off a new service provider entity since you have been offering your client for free public download for a long time?
We have a free version of X-Lite that you can download. X-Lite is downloaded about 150,000 times a month. There are over 3 million X-Lite endpoints. It is a broadly and virally deployed client that is typically deployed along with platforms like Asterisk. Bit it is a demo service. We intend to continue doing business as a vendor supplying solutions rather than service.
