Apr 2009: Timing, telecoms and technology

The history of technology is littered with examples of those who got their timing right - and those who got it wrong. Hit that famous hockeystick-shaped curve on the graph at its sweetspot and riches and even fame can be yours - as Bill Gates and numerous other entrepreneurs have found. Join it just a bit too late or a bit too early and you’ll only end up as a forgotten footnote as the rest of the world marches on.

Look at all the forces currently at work in the high-tech sector and it’s clear that a number are currently combining to drive a radical re-evaluation of the ways in which individual enterprises implement IT and telecom services in their organisations. These discontinuities however are also adding up to create rich new opportunities for some telecom service providers.

The case - eloquently made in a recent report from Forrester Research entitled ‘The Broad Opportunities in Managed Services’ - suggests that a combination of changes in technologies, investment cycles and economies are going to lead to an imminent and rapid take-up of managed service strategies by many enterprises. The wider argument predicts that companies in search of new communications services are less likely to invest in new hardware themselves, but will still require access to new services - both to keep themselves in business in the short term but still have enough capacity for rapid expansion when the upturn comes.

This has major implications for our telecoms community - fortunately ones that DIGITALK has already anticipated through its IP Virtual Office and Conferencing solution packages.

With these in place, service providers are able to offer their customers feature-rich and easily scalable business tools and services with minimal upfront costs to both parties. Taking an IP-based hosted telephony approach delivering Virtual PBX-like functions - even extending through into video conferencing - can be powerfully attractive for customers needing to save on today’s capital and operating costs, while still keeping their options as open as possible for the future. Indeed, DIGITALK’s IP Virtual Office solution just received the Product of the Year award for 2008 from Internet Telephony magazine.

"DIGITALK has proven they are committed to quality and excellence while addressing real needs in the marketplace," was the comment from Rich Tehrani, Editor-in-Chief of Internet Telephony, which was nice. We would like to think though that our perspective on ‘real needs’ extends into the future as well. Timing, after all, is all...

Justin Norris
Chief Executive Officer