Davide Fascì is the Country Manager of SMC Network’s Italian branch. In this role, the manager is responsible for expanding the brand’s penetration in the Italian market, with particular reference to the Small Medium Business and SOHO segment, a longstanding strength of the company. After studying computer science in Milan and the United States, Davide Fascì has gained significant commercial experience with increasing responsibilities, developed in companies such as Mitsubishi, Blixer, Netscalibur, and Intel Corporation.
How does the Italian VoIP market present itself and what are the prospects?
There are enormous potentials, especially due to the excellent economic results that this technology promises, and usually delivers. The possibility of making low-cost calls and breaking free from operators often not too attentive to customer needs is truly appealing for many entrepreneurs – but also for many individual users. On the other hand, the landscape is still quite complex: the real advantages of the technology are not clear, and there is much dispersion, due to the overabundance of models available on the market, but also to the different types of devices and various protocols.
What relationship do companies have with this market?
Companies are usually very interested, precisely because of the economic and flexibility advantages that VoIP promises. However, this interest is coupled with little knowledge of the technology, and above all the perception that this technology still lacks reliability. For this reason, it is important to educate, to make interested companies aware of the real advantages of VoIP, to move beyond fantasy and enter reality.
What is SMC’s vision?
SMC Networks has a fundamental vision that has always accompanied it: to offer the best possible technology at an acceptable price and with simple usage modes. This also applies to VoIP. It is important to make the use of this technology simple, fault tolerant, and economical. Our most recent announcements go precisely in this direction: to make VoIP accessible to as many companies as possible, making it reliable and easy to use.
Who is your typical customer?
SMC Networks has always targeted the world of SMEs, which in Italy represent the vast majority of the productive fabric. Our solutions combine ease of use, contained costs, and a high technological level to provide real support for the business of these entities, often the most active and dynamic operating in the market.
Who are your competitors?
There are many companies operating in this specific market, particularly appealing in Italy due to its size and territorial distribution. I could mention among many Linksys, D-Link, and Netgear, but the names are really numerous…
What does SMC offer in addition to the competitors present in Italy, why choose you?
Our competitive advantage often lies in the price-performance ratio, and directly stems from our corporate mission, which is to provide the best possible technology under the best possible economic conditions. This is made possible by our direct access to the production resources of Accton, the company that controls us and actually manufactures most of the networking devices on the market. The synergy with our parent company allows us to always be extremely competitive in the market.
What are the sector’s innovations?
Certainly, the recent novelty is the widespread use of Skype, which has had great success precisely because it offers everything users need: an easy, standard, and simple-to-use solution that promises – and delivers – cost reduction. This is the secret of success in this market…
How did the first quarter of 2007 go and what are your future goals?
The beginning of 2007 was very positive, both thinking about our natural market, that of SMEs, as well as looking ahead to ISPs and large projects. We further expanded our distribution network, gradually entering retail, and from the professional user standpoint, we are focusing heavily on switches, both with VDSL2 and Wi-Fi solutions, for municipal networks. Among our goals for the near future is to expand this part of the business, broadening our customer base and communicating as much as possible to the market our differentiating factors, namely the price/performance ratio and the ability to offer our clients a faster return on investment in case of creation or renewal of their network.
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