Engin launches hosted IP telephony on BroadSoft platform

Stuart Corner
Monday, 01 February 2010 13:21

Your IT - Home IT

VoIP service provider Engin (ASX: ENG) has become the latest player to enter the hosted IP telephony market, using a BroadSoft platform operated by a partner organisation.

The company has named Sense Event Group, which has five staff and which specialises in the design, management and production of live events, as one of the first customers, saying: "They have achieved up to 30 percent savings over their previous supplier." According to Engin users of the service can save up to 60 percent of costs compared to an in-house PBX.

The new service will be offered with a choice of five handsets (two from Cisco and three from Polycom). These will be preconfigured for use with the service. Engin's head of business sales, Jack McKeon, told iTWire: "We are preconfiguring handsets so we can sell them direct to the customer or they can get them from elsewhere and get our configuration loaded onto them. They will be plug and play: customers can plug them into any Internet connection and they will start working."

He said that a "low 30 percent" of Engin's VoIP customers were small business and the rest residential. "Historically we were seen as a residential provider but we are moving very much to shift that...We are focussed on giving small business all the communications they require."

He added that the BroadSoft product offered a range of unified communications features likely to be attractive to small business, including receiving fax as email, and click-to-dial integration with Microsoft Outlook.

Engin sells it VoIP and broadband Internet access services through "hundreds' of channel partners, McKeon said. These include wholesale partner who take the service 'white label', IT integration companies and PBX suppliers.

The company also sells direct via its web site and telesales. It has a customer support and telesales call centre with about 50 staff and just under 100 staff in total.

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