VON exhibitor IPcelerate is perhaps one of the few companies that can boast about making it through the recession relatively unscathed. The company develops IP-based software that performs functions from convergence and task management to call recording and video surveillance; and it’s working to incorporate trends such as social networking into its products. Business & Regulatory Editor Kelly Teal spoke with IPcelerate President and CEO Kevin Brown about the company’s evolution over the past few years, the impact of the economic downturn, and what’s next for the IP field.

VON: The last time you and I talked was at the Fall 2006 Channel Partners show in Washington, D.C. Without making you detail the minutiae of the past three years, what changes have occurred at IPcelerate – in terms of company growth or product focus or whatever strikes you as most relevant – that VON attendees should know?

Kevin Brown: IPcelerate began its journey as a Cisco Technology Development partner. Our initial goal for the first couple of years focused on delivering business-impacting solutions for customers embracing Cisco unified communications technologies.

In the past two years, IPcelerate began a campaign to execute Phase 2 of our strategy – diversification across multiple platforms. In order to accomplish this, we had to make fundamental changes in our architecture to embrace both new manufacturers as well as new mindsets, such as Web 2.0 and social networking. That is what you see in the announcements at VON.

Driving the heavy research and development that has gone into building products for Cisco, NEC, Nokia, Apple and others in the past year has been phenomenal growth during the worst economic downturn in the last 25+ years. In 2009, IPcelerate is experiencing both positive year-over-year growth as well as positive quarter-over-quarter growth, both triggered by the relevance of the solutions, especially during today’s economic climate.

VON: What do you see happening, generally, in IP and VoIP over the next year or so that we should all keep an eye on?

Kevin Brown: Some people say the economy is ready to turn around. Others disagree. Regardless, financial leaders for enterprise companies and small companies alike will continue to move forward in a fiscally prudent manner, being very selective about investments, particularly in technology. That is not to say they are not going to spend money on technology, but rather to say that they will continue looking to spend money where it solves business challenges, where it addresses business issues, rather than making ‘strategic buys’.

Because of this, I think we will see revenue for desktop phone sales begin to shrink in the next couple of years. You’re going to see companies buying cheaper, less functional desktop phones, because for the most part, PBX and phone manufacturers still – for whatever reason – resist the market desire of having relevant, ready-made applications resident on their phones. The manufacturers still force the customer to ‘go and find’ their applications. There are some exceptions, and they will see more success than others. But for the most part, expect financial leaders to start purchasing less expensive desktop phones, or more mobile devices that are already application-rich off the shelf.

Further, expect companies to continue implementing social networking sites/applications as a means of enhancing how they communicate internally as well as interact with customers, suppliers, partners, etc. Moreover, I expect these companies to also start looking for ways to integrate these social networking applications into the fabric of their infrastructure. Today, many of these implementations are ‘standalone’; kind of off to the side, away from their core technologies. Expect these companies to now start integrating these social applications with their core alerting systems, with their marketing outreach systems, with their customer support systems.

VON: Specifically, talk about trends in IP video surveillance; again, what should VON attendees know?

Kevin Brown: IP video surveillance means different things to different customers. To the large enterprise customer, it probably means streaming video to security desktops, with expensive cameras and network bandwidth considerations.

For the small business, it might be as simple (and effective) as an inexpensive IP camera capturing high-resolution still images that can be shared/sent as alerts, notifications, emails, or posted on social sites.

All to say, there are off-the-shelf solutions for customers to fit pretty much any budget, and customers shouldn’t jump to the most expensive solution right off the bat; rather, they should ask themselves what they really need, what challenge they are trying to solve, and devise that solution PRIOR to engaging with technology providers.

VON: Experts say the recession is coming to a close. But companies, not to mention individuals, are still cutting costs and scrutinizing every purchase. How has IPcelerate worked around these factors over the past couple of years, and how do you see those factors seeping – or not – into 2010?

Kevin Brown: We have focused on ‘the personal impact’ rather than selling product. In other words, once you understand that creating a safer campus might help a superintendent gain community support for bonds to build a new school, then the impact of unified communications becomes highly important. Once you discover that an integrated task management system that uses phones to drive alerts and notifications is not a productivity aid, but rather a tool that allows a retail chain to do more with fewer managers – then the impact of unified communications becomes highly measurable.

Personal impact touches many individuals within an organization which allows our customers/end-users to find multiple streams of budget to implement technologies. This personal impact focus/messaging has enabled us to grow in a time of world-wide financial duress. Remember, ‘companies’ are not buying technology. ‘Human beings’ are buying technology. If we understand not only their needs, but why their needs exist, then helping companies adopt our technologies remains fairly straight-forward.

VON:How have sales discussions changed since the recession began? And once the recession does end, I’m curious whether customers will remain hyper-conscious of every purchase, and what that means for sales talks and cycles over the next 24-36 months.

Kevin Brown: I truly do not believe our sales discussions have changed considerably because of the recession. I believe this is why we have been able to perform as we have performed the past 12 months – as we have not had to change our talk track due to the economic downturn. It remains focused on business impact and personal impact, as it always has.

We have not experienced an extended sales cycle and our pipeline continues to grow at an acceptable pace. Because of this we will be able to move faster into unchartered conversations as we will be adding to our existing talk track and not having to re-invent a talk track as some of our competitors have had to do.

VON: What’s next for IPcelerate? What should VON attendees be looking to see from the company by this time next year?

Kevin Brown: IPcelerate technologies today run on the unified communications platforms of Cisco Systems and NEC. You’re going to see new manufacturing partners in that same vein in the coming months and quarters. Our technologies today run on mobile devices from Nokia and Apple. You’ll see more mobile devices added over the next 12 months. And because of the great interest from service providers, you’re going to see more solutions – particularly around mobility – offered in a hosted manner. And clearly, with the enhancements we’ve made to our NIPA framework with the release of NIPA 2.0, you’ll see increased activity around social networking.

A final thought – all IPcelerate technologies are brought to market through a channel strategy. Whether it is VARs, systems integrators, service providers, or manufacturers (through OEM relationships), our technologies are brought to the market by partners. And these partners are becoming more and more adept at identifying both customer requirements AND market requirements. They are using our drag-and-drop IDE tools to address both. You’re going to see partner-labeled/branded solutions – using our framework as an underlying foundation – being brought to individual customers as well as entire markets. Some partners use our tools to address ‘this particular school’, as an example. Another partner, however, might use our tools to create their own branded product that they sell to ‘all schools’. For example, a U.S.-based integrator has already taken our framework and used it to create their own branded product that they sell to assisted living centers. You’re going to see more and more of this. Why? Because customers are wanting to implement ‘off-the-shelf’ solutions. Partners are realizing this, and in the absence of these off-the-shelf solutions coming from manufacturers, partners are stepping in to provide them. And they’re using our technologies to do so. Further, because the partners are now creating these solutions themselves – they are looking to take them to a wider market, across multiple vendors. This will be good for the market, for the customers.