FierceVoIP Leaders: Marco Limena, CEO Sylantro Systems

On the eve of Sylantro's annual users conference, FierceVoIP chatted with Sylantro Systems CEO Marco Limena to discuss the state of the VoIP industry and what the future may hold for the industry and Sylantro.

FierceVoIP: Everyone has got the financial crisis on their minds these days. What do you think the implications will be for telephony and VoIP?

Limena: I think experimental projects and infrastructure budgets will be cut, and vendors will really have to justify the business benefit of what they are doing.

FierceVoIP: How do you think it will affect your company directly?

Limena: Most of the more than 95 carriers we work with sell services for around $25 per month. They tell me, Marco, we spend an average of $200 in sales cost to reach a customer and more on other costs, so it takes us about 12 months to reach profitability with each customer. If the customer has any issue with a piece of the product you have provided and needs to place a single call back for assistance, we've just delayed profitability for three more months, and that's not something we can afford. So we must work to provide a product that is not only useful and valuable, but reliable and easy to use as well.

FierceVoIP: What are some changes you see coming in the VoIP space, or would like to see happen?

Limena: For a long time, the industry has operated in silos of technology. Voice was voice, text was text, so on so on. But we're moving beyond that, you see software driving the next-gen softphones and you see vertical silos being replaced by integrated telephony platforms. The question for the future really is how can you deliver simple, reliable solutions and specialized applications for business, because the "one size fits all" approach is not going to work going forward.

FierceVoIP: Does Sylantro have any product announcements coming in the next quarter?

Limena: We are really excited about launching our new set of specialized applications for our Web platform that were developed in our Synapps "sandbox." You'll see some great innovation in automated inbound and outbound campaigns, for instance, a car dealership wants to inform customers about warranty options about to expire on vehicle purchases, or a university wants to notify thousands of students about a last-minute course offering or schedule change: We have applications that will make these outbound campaigns automatic, and then measurable once people have responded.

FierceVoIP: What do you see as the main benefit of the application bundle you are launching?

Limena: The way we test the usability, we do it in real world conditions. Many other times it's tested against IT managers, and that can lead to problems when people with out that knowledge base have to try to work out issues with them. Like I said, one phone call back to the carrier because a customer can't work out an issue costs the carrier three months of profitability, so we want to make sure there are easy solutions.

We want to make applications that are cost-efficient to the provider and easily applicable for end-users. I think we have a great product, because now, people need to move away from cost containment to think about productivity enhancement. The middle-level people at a business, sales, marketing, they're not thinking cut costs, they just want to do their job better, and I think we can help.

FierceVoIP: What do you think the next two to three years has in store for the VoIP industry?

Limena: Well, service providers generated something like $3.2 trillion in global revenue last year, but you know that's diminishing and customers are moving elsewhere because they realize it's about more than just voice now. So we need to take that huge demand that is there, and transform that business into something new. Any challenge presents opportunity, and I think you will see that delays are not acceptable, but the people who can deliver value-added services and think about how to do that reliably and with no delay will be very successful.

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