Natural Convergence (News - Alert), supplier of a hosted VoIP application, previously emphasized channel partners for distribution of its product. Now the company is taking straight aim at the carrier market as its primary distribution focus. In preparation for that move the company has changed its sales force by adding executives with carrier sales experience, including Pat Smith, new CEO and Bill Crank, president.

 

Crank notes that Natural Convergence (News - Alert) already has a "couple of large Tier One partners, one large cable partner and a U.S. ILEC." He also sees "a great opportunity to extend partnerships with five or six new carriers." That suggests carriers now believe the hosted VoIP market is ripe for attack.

 

The repositioning is stark. "I don't sell" to Tier One carriers or ILECs, former CEO David Cork (News - Alert) said in 2007. "If you want to take customers from the ILECs, I'm your man."

 

Eastern Management Group, in 2006, reported that the installed base of 32 million key system lines in use by small businesses averaged 12 years in age. Natural Convergence obviously believes hosted alternatives now make sense for that base of customers. And apparently so do carriers.

 

The company believes carrier partners can gain a two to three times increase in monthly end user revenues, on contracts of three to five years length, by offering the Natural Convergence solution. To deliver those numbers, the company has optimized the provisioning and management systems so carriers can install and support an end user for less than one month’s revenue, using handsets that require no pre-provisioning, built on a user self-serve for moves, adds and changes.

 

Natural Convergence says carriers can attain gross margins in excess of 50 percent, earn back investment after three months and hit payback in less than 12 months using its "zero touch" deployment methods.

 

The company also has introduced its latest release which delivers high value features that contribute directly to a service provider’s bottom line. Among them: a Web interface that integrates directly to an existing provisioning system.

 

Scale also is required, so the company supports 20,000 end users and 4,000 simultaneous sessions from a single set of application servers. Standard protocols and application program and management interfaces also are featured.

 

And the system has been designed for installation by the existing telephony personnel.

 

Supported phones include:

 

Other SIP-based phones can be added using a self certification program.

 

The Dynamic Site Support features enable off-site users with broadband Internet access at home, as well as traveling workers from hotels or public “hot spots,” to make and receive calls as if at their office desks.

 

Additionally, Dynamic Site Support capabilities were designed so that service providers are able to address the varying national regulatory requirements for emergency call routing (e.g. 911 in the United States and Canada, 999 in the United Kingdom), while meeting the needs of off-site users.

 

Smith says licenses in use are doubling every eight months