“Sales for 2009 will see a 15% increase over 2008 despite a difficult year – mainly for obvious economic reasons. Whilst some projects have been cancelled or put on hold, we have also seen the impact of companies spending to increase efficiencies and this has been most prevalent in the IP PBX area.
EFL has seen most growth (in sales value) in the 100+ user category of IP PBXs. Epygi’s new QuadroM 32X supports up to 192 users and, by offering the features expected by larger organisations as standard, has met their needs perfectly at a very affordable price. Interestingly, a high percentage of these sales have been into sub-100 user companies who are planning for growth and who are, therefore, looking for a solid platform to facilitate this growth and to protect their investment.
This is a competitive area of the market; the large, established manufacturers are targeting this space with cost-down versions of their bigger-ticket solutions and new manufacturers are offering a range of products looking to capture the entire SoHo/SME space. Manufacturers such as Epygi, who have designed products from the ground up in a ‘pure IP’ environment will continue to provide a real and very credible alternative to the legacy PBX manufacturers.
It should not be under-estimated how difficult it can be to sell into this area. Many data resellers who can sell complete data networks into this area can stumble when it comes to selling voice solutions – simply by not understanding the voice proposition well enough. EFL has been working with it’s reseller partners to help with this process by providing sales collateral and ROI information, by assisting resellers with end-user demonstrations and by providing certified training, free evaluations and network design assistance.”