FierceVoIP Leaders: Donovan Jones, CEO CounterPath

FierceVoIP: It's been a busy year for CounterPath, including two acquisitions and the recent announcement of restructuring. What's the status of the company right now? 

Jones: We're attempting to address the FMC market along two different paths. We want to leverage our existing softphone offerings with the integration of both Firsthand and BridgePort. We also want to identify overlaps in-house and changes in the market so that we can optimize our new FMC products for the market. 

FierceVoIP: Were the layoffs you announced recently part of the strategic integration of the acquisitions or were they due to prevailing economic conditions? 

Jones: Mainly they were due to the restructuring. Due to a number of outstanding customer contracts, we had a lag in our restructuring after the acquisitions. But also, in this climate, we have to manage the burn and some of the cutbacks are a reflection of striving to optimize the business. We didn't want to get caught off-guard if the market got more difficult. 

FierceVoIP: Have you begun to see a slowdown in uptake and leads at CounterPath due to the economic conditions? 

Jones: No, we haven't seen a slowdown yet. We're seeing good uptake on software, as people delay hardware purchases. We have seen some slight extension in sales cycles, because people are taking longer to make decisions, given the present uncertainty. But since our products center around cost savings and productivity increases, we expect people to see the value. 

FierceVoIP: What are the main challenges in developing and deploying mobile clients? 

Jones: The sheer number of unique operating systems out there, in addition to all the handset configurations, that you have to support to provide successful services is a real difficulty. There is a lot of R&D work that goes into addressing this. It's a challenge for any company to put a SIP client in managed support, to enable dual-mode clients, for instance. 

FierceVoIP: How does CounterPath handle those issues? 

Jones: We've collocated our gateway with the PBX and that's helped with some of the issues, and we've also produced a more lightweight client. 

FierceVoIP: How have you integrated Firsthand and BridgePort into CounterPath's overall operations? 

Jones: We've been able to take their technology and integrate it with our existing operations to make a better product, especially using the BridgePort offering for our FMC solution. But even more, the smaller companies didn't have the deployed set of channels we had here from selling our desktop softphones. We've been able to leverage their technology to offer new products and services to our existing clients. We've commercialized the offering very well, with a combination of our softphone and additional technology to add to the channels we've already deployed through. We're particularly excited about the continuing integration of the desktop client and mobile offerings. 

FierceVoIP: What is the lead time to set up a CounterPath system in the enterprise? 

Jones: Well it really depends. If we already interoperate with the specific PBX, it's a pretty quick process. We interoperate with many major systems, so this is usually the case. But if we have to engineer interoperability with the gateway, it can be a bunch of work to knit together several systems, or to keep some functionalities of the PBX exposed in our client. In the most difficult cases, which require the most hands-on engineering and design, it could take up to a few months. 

FierceVoIP: What do you think the future holds for FMC? 

Jones: The space is so new, you can really only take guesses, but I think we're positioned nicely. I think you'll see greater integration between internet, mobile and desktop services. They are converging more and more. I think in the future, it wont' simply be about voice, either, but about the combination of voice, data, and messaging and how the efficiencies that are created drive productivity. I'm very interested in contextual messaging, with data around messages and perhaps advertising. Location-based services also look like they're poised to take off. I think telepresence and video capabilities will begin to really demonstrate the ability to improve productivity as well.