Carlo Petrolo, Director for Business Development and Sales in Southern Europe, Middle East, and Africa at CommuniGate Systems.
What does the Italian market look like and what are its prospects?
CommuniGate Systems has been present in the market for a long time; it was founded in 1991 with the aim of providing applications for businesses, universities, and ISPs. We manage the entire business through local partners to whom we provide support through the direct pre-sale activity carried out by CommuniGate’s local collaborators based in Italy.
What is the consumers’ relationship with this market?
CommuniGate has the great advantage of possessing deep knowledge of IP communications. From the beginning, we invested in research and development to expand our knowledge from email to total Internet communication, which involves not only the transfer of emails over the Internet but also voice, video, and other types of rich media. With changes in communication methods, VoIP and Instant Messaging are increasingly becoming common goods for end users just as email already is today. Furthermore, even in the business world, we are witnessing an increase in the use of these applications because they help unify all communications, provide mobility, and make business communications more effective.
What is CGS’s vision?
Our mission is to eliminate exclusive service protocols and open end-to-end IP communications to the entire global online base, consisting of over two billion accounts. In 2000, the term Unified Communications was just background noise, but on the other hand, the necessary technologies and applications were not available. With Web 2.0 and Social Networks, however, unified communications become a reality. Our flagship product, CommuniGate Pro, allows companies and consumers to have a single address for all Internet communications: from email communication, to IM, to voice. Pronto!, our platform based on Flash technology, unifies all these communications. With a single interface, users can send emails, organize meetings through a shared calendar, use Instant Messaging, and click-to-call to talk with others. Additionally, the platform provides Web 2.0 features such as myStuff for sharing Rich Media content. People can work and communicate through Pronto! wherever they are – at home or at an internet cafĂ© – because they always have access to their files and the communication means they usually use. With the next version of CommuniGate Pro, we will also provide true mobility to mobile phones with ActiveSync/AirSync.
Who is your typical customer?
In the corporate environment, our typical customer purchases between 25 and 500 usage licenses. With CommuniGate Pro, they receive a carrier-grade product that is easy to use, reliable, easy to install and manage, and has a very low TCO. Our platform supports over 30 operating systems starting with WIN, Mac OSX, and Linux, so that the customer can have freedom of choice and find an alternative to MS Exchange with lower software costs, fewer hardware requirements, and additional features like IM and VoIP.
In the education/university sector, clients can provide services to students and their staff. Especially in this area, due to new students arriving every semester, clients need a flexible and easy-to-use solution. They also need scalable solutions given the increasing interest in communication from students.
Looking at ISPs and operators, the advantage of CommuniGate Pro is its scalability to support more than 25 million users without any difficulty and the opportunity to generate economic benefits by using services like IM and VoIP or other applications, such as games, that can be connected to CommuniGate Pro. In this market, CommuniGate is helping ISPs differentiate themselves from each other and create innovative new services for their subscribers.
Who are your competitors?
CommuniGate is a complete solution that can work in various sectors. When referring to competition in the email/messaging field, the main competitors are Microsoft and free software, but making a comparison is very difficult because CommuniGate Pro provides much more than just a messaging service. When considering VoIP, the market is full of different solutions and it’s almost impossible to identify any particular one. Thanks to the new Pronto! user interface for Rich Media applications, we are entering the Web 2.0 market, where practically no one can provide a similar experience to users.
What does CGS offer beyond the competitors present in Italy? Why choose you?
CommuniGate Systems has been present in the market for over 10 years and is a stable vendor with strong profitability. Investments in development are so strong that it’s no surprise that CommuniGate Pro has won more awards than any other product on the market and continues to prove its effectiveness in various benchmarks. Our customers appreciate that CommuniGate Pro always provides the most advanced technology for their communications. In Italy, another advantage is our local partners who have a lot of experience and provide local services and support.
What are the latest developments in the sector?
For our Pronto! interface, we are working closely with Adobe since it is based on Flash/Flex technology. Soon we will announce to the public the beta of Pronto! AIR (Adobe Integrated Realtime), which provides offline and desktop drag & drop functionality to the platform. Furthermore, we are focusing our innovations on sharing Rich Media content and mobility. We are also working on next-generation applications such as the ability to take photos with one’s handset and send them to one’s blog.
How was the last year and what are your future goals?
CommuniGate has now more than ten years of profitability. We are a privately held company and do not publish profit data. But we are very satisfied with the results achieved with the adoption of complete Internet communications such as IM and VoIP. Our customer base counts about 130 million users, of which 47 million are voice users, with continuous growth. We are observing strong demand in the corporate world for unified communication solutions – and ISP segment operators are investing in services that can help increase their subscriber retention. And this is exactly what Pronto! is providing.
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