On the development of seamless collaboration technologies and products few can challenge the experience and influence of Toby Gold, Chief Executive Officer at sipsynergy.
Advances made in creating a strong market for seamless collaboration are in large part down to the efforts of technology champions such as Gold who recognised the benefits of collaboration early in his working life and soon after set about meeting the demands of customers wanting ever more seamless interaction. "My initial introduction to what I'd call collaboration goes back to my time in engineering," he recalled. "I trained as an engineer in what were called simultaneous engineering techniques, where people would collaborate over the lifecycle of product development. That was in the 80s and was the first time people were starting to use technology to collaborate effectively. That approach would then become embedded in a lot of future visualisation technologies. Not long after that, still fairly early in my IT career, I began working officially in collaboration and have been involved in it, and passionate about it, for over 20 years."
The most visible sign of collaboration as we know it today emerged in the early 2000s when Cisco, for example, prioritised the development of UC. And recognising the potential impact of collaboration and UC across the entire range of businesses Gold moved to Cisco before running the collaboration practice at Logicalis that was responsible for the video conferencing business. "We were very much in that vanguard of organisations that were in the midst of working out how to create a seamless collaboration experience across voice, messaging, video and other collaboration technologies," stated Gold.
"While at Logicalis we tried to create our own hosted collaboration solution so that the whole customer lifecycle becomes more integrated and repeatable while costing less from a partner perspective. I tried to do this using the resources of one of the largest systems integrators in the UK, and even then it was a struggle. We managed to come up with an amalgamated approach to what I call the end-to-end service ethos but really didn't get any further than that."
According to Gold sipsynergy has passed through this impasse and his overwhelming urge was to resume his role as a lead player in driving the market for true collaboration and help to realise sipsynergy's potential. "I know how hard this is to do and appreciate what sipsynergy has done," explained Gold. "When I saw what the company had achieved I was so excited, but knew it needed structure and investment to take it further. That's why I joined.
"I've run start-up type organisations, I've worked for a manufacturer and I've worked in more mature systems integrator and service provider environments, so I know where we're coming from and where we're going. I understand the manufacturer's perspective and believe I've got the ability to realise sipsynergy's potential, which is to be a far more scaled up business addressing the needs of the SMB and mid-market customer. Much of what I've done in my career has led me here. The role is a summary of all the things I've achieved to date. Fingers crossed, my greatest achievements are ahead of me here at sipsynergy."
Gold joined the company two months ago along with another industry heavyweight, Tom Kelly, who is the firm's Chairman. The duo are charged with accelerating sipsynergy's growth and customer base following a £2.75 million investment from YFM Equity Partners. Gold moved from Dell Software where his most recent role was Director of Northern Europe. His first priority in the new job was to ensure that sipsynergy had a sound financial plan and ability to measure and track progress. "We're in a period of accelerated growth therefore much of our current focus is around identifying and recruiting the right people for the right roles," he added.
sipsynergy was established in 2009 by Barnaby Ritchley and John Fox as a developer of software solutions for Cisco UC service providers. The founders soon realised they had the basis of a strong UCaaS business and invested in a Cisco HCS platform. Their insight into the requirements of the service provider community and an innovative approach to process and technology automation gave them a powerful USP.
"We obtained the VC funding and recruited a number of new executives to fully exploit the market opportunity," added Gold. "We're focused on bringing the benefits of UCaaS to business customers through the partner community and we plan to grow aggressively over the next few years."
Gold's current role reflects the technology gulf between the mid-2000s and now. Initially a software company, sipsynergy recognised the best way to serve its customers was to create a platform and deliver it as-a-service. From the outset it was solving the problem of multi-tenancy and service automation and applying that to create a UCaaS platform. "There's been an enormous amount of growth in the hosted collaboration market for companies with less than 250 users," said Gold. "That market in Cisco's space hasn't
been well served and, historically, it's been difficult for organisations like ours to deliver a service that was sufficiently repeatable and would meet the requirements of smaller organisations. So we have a fast growing market that's not been well served, and our approach is to build a highly repeatable automated platform and scale into that market using a partner led approach. We've put a tremendous amount of effort into making the partner's life easier."
Automation plays a significant role in Gold's plans and he expects to peak at circa 65 employees. The firm currently works with 50 partners and has almost 10,000 subscribers on its platform. "We want to increase the number of partners we work with, but our focus is very much on quality rather than quantity," added Gold. "Our two main challenges are to quickly broadcast the message of what sipsynergy is able to offer to our customers and partners in terms of capitalising on the benefits of our platform. Secondly, our ability to innovate needs to be matched by our ability to execute or any potential competitors will catch up. The aim of where we want to get to over the course of the next three-five years is key to our whole company ethos. We want to be universally known as a partner-enabled collaboration provider for the mid-market and SMB customer space, whatever shape collaboration takes over the course of the next three-five years."
The challenges of the present are more easily overcome by looking forward to a new golden age of communications which draws on the experience and achievements of industry movers such as Gold whose contribution is irrefutable, and often associated with pivotal decisions. "We decided to make a substantial commitment to Cisco's hosted collaboration solution platform and ensure that it was deliverable to our partners, as well as making the conscious decision to be white labelled," commented Gold. "Through our partnership with Cisco, working through resellers into SMBs, sipsynergy has created one of the first white labelled UCaaS 'Business in a Box' solutions. This has enabled partners to deliver their own branded enterprise class collaboration solutions to small to mid-sized businesses."
Collaboration technology and the marketplace is constantly evolving so another point of focus for sipsynergy is monitoring industry trends and making sure that its roadmap is ahead of the game. "The biggest industry trend impacting us is mobility," stated Gold. "People want the same experience from their corporate collaboration platform as their consumer apps and they want to be able to have access any time, on any device.
"To stay aligned with the market we take a considered approach to keeping our edge on innovation while adding more process and structure around what we do. Our culture is entrepreneurial. We're fortunate to have some of the most gifted developers I've ever seen. It's the combination of entrepreneurial flare and deep techie geekdom that makes sipsynergy what it is."
The expansion of sipsynergy has validated Gold's early assumptions about the growth potential of true collaboration. He looks back on those days as an engineer from the standpoint of a business leader who aims to bring a transformation in the way businesses operate and communicate, typified by an urge to make a difference, not only to sipsynergy, its customers and partners, but also the wider industry. "As a sector I'd like to see us practice what we preach more, have better access to the full range of talent out there and bring more women into the workplace," he said. "I'd also like to see people be productive while living a fulfilled family life. I don't see why technology needs to be so intrusive. It should support a work-life balance."•