Ubiquity's got your number
Phone line services software can track you down
Karyn Standen
The Ottawa Citizen
Not too long ago, large
telephone companies were able
to dominate their markets in
part by offering customers low
long-distance phone rates. But a
combination of regulatory
changes and rapid technology
advancements opened the
floodgates to new, nimble
competitors who now threaten
to run circles around the
telecom giants.
The result, says Ian Angus,
president of Angus
TeleManagement Group, is
"standalone long-distance is no
longer a viable business" for carriers.
"That means you can have many customers but no profits," he said, referring to
the large carriers, "unless you can sell other services. I've been listening to
carriers say for over a year that their future lies in offering multiple services."
Ubiquity Software Corp. has been listening as well. The Newbridge Networks
Corp. affiliate, based in Newport, Wales, and Kanata, is pitching a variety of
"value-added, carrier-managed" services to Internet service providers, network
equipment vendors and large enterprises as a way for them to attract new
customers and extract greater revenues from existing ones.
"(Carriers) are trying to flip their business models away from just hauling voice
for cheap," said Martin Sendyk, vice-president of product marketing and general
manager at Ubiquity.
"Instead, they want to add an extra value component and have users pay for
things beyond just cheap long distance."
Ubiquity provides "intelligent co-ordination" between hardware on the desk, such
as the phone and computer, and network-based systems such as databases and
enterprise-based phone-switching systems.
The company's product suite, the Helmsman Communication Server and
Helmsman Desktop Client, enables e-mail, fax, video, telephony (via both legacy
and Internet Protocol-based networks) to interact with common business
applications such as word processing or spreadsheet programs. These multiple
services are conveyed over a single Internet Protocol (IP) circuit.
Take the hard-to-reach executive as an example, says Mr. Sendyk: A
computer-based automated attendant answers a phone call from a client looking
for the executive. The call is routed to the employee's desk, but he's not there to
answer it. The Ubiquity-based software then checks the executive's computer
database to see where he might be. Finding that the executive is scheduled to be
in the company boardroom for a meeting, the software directs the call to the
phone in the conference room.
If there is still no answer, Ubiquity's Java-based software can be instructed to
wrap up the call in a number of ways, including ringing the executive's cell
phone or depositing the call in voice mail.
All this activity can take place in a matter of seconds, Mr. Sendyk says.
"These entities have talked before, a phone will always talk to a PBX for
example. But never has all this been connected and intelligently co-ordinated. We
offer a platform that does that.
"And when the user gets to do all that neat stuff, they're willing to pay for it, and
that becomes a service that the service provider can charge for."
Ubiquity is targeting a number of developing trends in the communications
industry, including the outsourcing of remote access management by
corporations and telecommuting.
The company points to a research report, released last year by the Giga
Information Group, which suggests that, by next year, corporate information
technology managers will outsource 25 per cent of their remote access
infrastructure support.
And according to the Gartner Group, in a report also released last year, more
than 100 million employees world-wide will do some kind of remote work by
2002.
All this, says Bob Hafner, vice-president and research director at the Gartner
Group, means carriers are scrambling to provide a larger percentage of the
communications services demanded by customers.
"Carriers are saying (to customers), 'If I give you these services, and I give you
a discount for buying just from me, does that interest you?'
"And we're seeing that it does (interest customers)," he said, adding "we're
starting to see a real focus" on customers wanting to buy a range of services
from a single carrier.
Ubiquity was founded in 1993 by president and chief executive Simon Gibson,
and chief technology officer Mike Doyle.
In its early stage, the private company was involved "in a bunch of things," Mr.
Sendyk said, including building extranets for the automotive industry.
Ubiquity has grown to 50 employees and sales of nearly $8 million Cdn.
In March 1997, Celtic House Investment Partners Ltd., a venture capital firm
controlled by Newbridge chairman Terence Matthews, invested about $2 million
in Ubiquity, said Andrew Waitman, a general partner at Celtic House. Newbridge
invested about $1 million in the company in September 1998, Mr. Waitman
added.
Two months later, Ubiquity joined the Newbridge family as an affiliate, with Mr.
Matthews chairing its board.
Since its recent rounds of private equity financing, Ubiquity has focused
primarily on the carrier market.
The company opened a six-person sales and marketing office in Kanata earlier
this year that is expected to direct the activities of as many as 20 employees
located throughout North America by year's end. (The senior executives, R&D
team and product management group are based in Wales.)
The Kanata office's mandate, says Mr. Sendyk, is to "make something happen in
North America," in terms of raising Ubiquity's profile among potential customers
and boosting revenue.
"We expect to see significant revenue, in the millions" of dollars generated by the
Kanata office, Mr. Sendyk said, declining to be more specific.
The company is targeting so-called alternate carriers, which emerged following
de-regulation in the telecommunications industry to challenge incumbent carriers.
These companies, ranging between $30 million and $300 million in sales, "have
money to spend, they are desperately trying to take money away from the
incumbents (traditional carriers), and they need to differentiate" themselves from
tough competitors, Mr. Sendyk said.
Ubiquity is also looking to partner with equipment vendors in order to tailor its
systems to a wide range of advanced communications equipment -- essential in
today's world of multi-vendor networks where a variety of equipment and
services must be compatible.
To this end, Ubiquity is working with Nortel Networks Corp., Mitel Corp. and
Newbridge. In June, the company signed a preferred partner agreement with
Nokia to develop advanced applications for IP telephony-based networks.
Ubiquity is also "engaged in conversations with Cisco and we'll soon start
conversations with Lucent," said Mike Hornby, Ubiquity's vice-president, sales.
Mr. Hornby, formerly a vice-president at QNX Software Systems Ltd., has
identified 28 potential customers for Ubiquity, and plans to close deals with 14 of
them in the next six months.
To support its rush of activity, Ubiquity will engage in a new round of financing
in the next eight months, primarily from North American sources. Mr. Sendyk
declined to say how much money the company hopes to raise.
According to Mr. Waitman, Celtic House will "likely" get involved in the next
round of funding, providing about 25 per cent of the total.
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