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Alteva recently announced that they had become certified resellers of Polycom (News - Alert) IP phones, specifically the company’s HD Voice SoundPoint IP 550 and 650 models.

 

I had the opportunity to catch up with Alteva’s CEO, William Bumbernick to find out more about his firm as well as what the opportunity with Polycom means to Alteva.

 

WB: Alteva is North America’s largest provider of Enterprise Hosted VoIP and has become the pioneer for showcasing the high quality and reliability of Hosted VoIP solutions. Alteva provides businesses with “Communication as a Service” that require minimal installation and configuration while eliminating monthly phone system maintenance charges and reducing overall telephony costs. With a sophisticated open standards infrastructure, Alteva enables businesses to easily integrate existing business applications. Rather than building their processes around the limitations of their phone system, Alteva’s customers build their phone systems around their ideal processes. Based in Philadelphia, Alteva provides internet access, telephone system and service to growth-oriented businesses in 48 states and 9 countries.

 

WB: Alteva will be the number one Enterprise IP Telephony Service Provider in the nation. We will do this by providing the most reliable network, the most responsive and proactive customer service, and the best value to customers in our industry.

 

WB: Alteva’s ideal customer is a multi-location enterprise corporation in need of a new phone system. This ideal client will have 50–5,000 employees and spend $3,000 or more per month in combined telecommunications costs.

 

WB: Generally speaking our customers are interested in:

 

WB: Alteva customers are looking for the same reliability of their traditional system but enhanced features such as Unified Communications (News - Alert), which integrates users’ e-mail, voicemail and faxes all into one place. Another feature is CRM integration. Alteva Freedom for Salesforce.com integrates the customer’s phone system with Salesforce.com, allowing call handlers to receive screen pops based on the phone caller’s id. Also Fixed Mobile Convergence (News - Alert), such as the Alteva Anywhere product, which allows users to easier answer and transfer calls from their cell phone to desk phone and vice versa. We also find a lot of users looking at our call recording product, Alteva Archive, for calling documentation, compliance and training purposes.

 

As you can image it is impossible to list all of the desired features of Alteva’s platform so I only mentioned a few in the paragraph above.

 

WB: We find the IP501 and IP430 are the most widely sold phones but the IP550 and IP650 are the most widely requested due to unmatched call clarity of HD voice.

 

WB: When call clarity in an enterprise level account is the most pressing concern, then no other company other than Polycom can deliver the quality that the customer desires.

 

WB: No just the opposite for hosted VoIP. In general, the hosted VoIP market has seen an increase in growth during this time of a downward economy. As I speak to peers in the industry they are mirroring this sentiment. Hosted and “as a Service” models become more appealing when budgets are being scrutinized. In 1999 there was an increase in PBX (News - Alert) replacements due to Y2K concerns. Those PBX’s are now at their replacement intervals of eight years. These companies are forced to look at PBX replacements and the most cost effective method of accomplishing this is via a Hosted model. The core benefits of hosted solutions are annualized and upfront capital reductions. These core benefits drive customers to this solution rather than to competing solutions in a downward economy.

 

WB: Alteva’s outlook will remain strong with a projected growth rate of close to 65%.