Soon-to-be-Cisco's Tandberg bullish on ANZ videoconference market

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 21 January 2010 10:47

IT Industry - Strategy

Tandberg Australian New Zealand is aiming for 25 percent revenue growth in 2010; double its 2009 year-on-year growth.

Following acceptance of Cisco's takeover offer for its Norwegian listed parent, Tandberg ANZ expects to become part of Cisco locally when the deal is consummated later this year.

Regional director, Philip Siefert, told a press conference in Sydney: "There are two regulatory hurdles to pass. We have passed the first phase in the US and EU and we have started phase 2. We expect to complete that in late May or early June. Tandberg will become the Cisco Telepresence Technology Group and my whole team will move over into [Cisco's Australian HQ] in North Sydney."

In addition to 25 percent revenue growth, Siefert said he expected to add at least four more staff during the year taking the total to 32. "We are looking to appoint someone in Perth, where we don't have anyone at present. In the industry verticals we plans to grow our mining expertise. We all ready have good expertise in health and education." He said the Tandberg channel structure would remain unchanged. He described the 25 percent growth target as "quite modest" saying: "Prior to 2009 we did 42 percent [year on year growth]."

According to Siefert, a major contributor to sales growth in 2009 was infrastructure rather than videoconferencing units and room systems. Sales of multiparty conferencing units were up 75 percent of firewall traversal and SIP gateway products 65 percent compared to a 12 percent increase in executive desktop systems and 18 percent growth in high definition systems.

"Executive desktops are starting to equal the numbers of meeting room systems, and that means people are no longer scheduling video meetings; they are becoming ad hoc, like a phone call...[So] you need to have a network and you need to have infrastructure that is reliable...We have seen significant growth in our MCU multiparty unit that allows us to pull together four, five or 30 participants and we have increased sales of our firewall traversal and SIP gateway by 65 percent."

As an example, Siefert cited long time Tandberg customer, National Australia Bank. "NAB have about 240 meeting rooms but the big investment they made with us was in infrastructure. They bought multiparty bridging units to enable them to bring in more than six video calls at one time. They are extending that into [Microsoft] OCS so they can bring in instant messaging."

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