Ottawa IP vendor eyes Cisco's marketshare

Making even the smallest of businesses look like a big player is the focus behind the solutions offered by TalkSwitch, an Ottawa-based telephony vendor that could give Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) a run for its money in the "S" of the SMB market.

The company got its start in 1990 as Centrepoint Technologies and begin as a PBX vendor, focusing on the largely overlooked small business market. It rebuilt its offerings from the ground-up though in 2000 to launch TalkSwitch, a feature-rich phone system for small businesses designed to scale as the business grows.

Kim Dixon, vice-president marketing for TalkSwitch, said TalkSwitch is a phone system designed to function as essentially a PBX for an SMB, offering features such as auto attendant, voicemail, extensions, and offsite connections. The software allows it to work with traditional analog as well as VoIP phones, and scales up to 64 users per location.

"It is your phone system," said Dixon. "When small businesses want to save money, look professional and connect everywhere they want to, they should have a good business phone system and that's what TalkSwitch does."

The TalkSwitch systems start at $795 for the low-end system, moving up to $2175 for the high-end system as the need for seats increases. In addition to the base system, TalkSwitch also offers a line or cordless, analog and IP phones, as well as accessories such as advanced software to manage an attendant console from a PC, or a sophisticated call reporting package.

"All the key features you would want in a phone system are included in there," said Dixon. "It's easy to use and affordable, can be installed and maintained by the owner, and it has all the key features someone would need."

TalkSwitch supports both IP as well as traditional telephony, and Dixon said while traditional telephony remains popular in the SMB segment for very good reasons, as businesses begin to grow and invest in infrastructure she's seeing a migration over time towards IP.

"VoIP offers cost savings and flexibility based on the kind of business you run, the calls you make and where you make them," said Dixon. "The small business customer is looking to what do I need today, and for the future, and how cam I optimize my systems to get the features I need at a cost I can afford.

Most of TalkSwitch's business goes through its channel of reseller partners, said Dixon, which numbers some 1500 North American partners, of which at least 400 are Canadian. The company does do some direct sales, but she said the bulk of inbound leads are referred to channel partners.