Going to Convergence Summit North to discuss Hosted Voice ?

Posted by Chris on March 23rd, 2011

If you are visiting Convergence Summit North and want to discuss Hosted Voice solutions then please call onto the Azlan stand where you will find Clare Jenkins of Cisco FutureLine.

Not sure if George Clooney is going to be there but I am reliably informed that there is a Nespresso machine and coffee mugs and Clare will be happy to go for a coffee with you and discuss how Cisco Hosted Voice might be the right Hosted Voice solution for you.

Andy Brocklehurst, Cisco’s RSM for Small Business will be presenting and participating in a round table discussion and wondering around the show.

Cisco have a new Small Business website at http://www.ciscosblaunchpad.com/

Speakers at UCExpo 2011 – Hosted Voice needs to be Simples !

Posted by Chris on March 4th, 2011

Clare Jenkins, M.D. of FutureLine, is going to be one of the speakers at UCExpo 2011 and will have a simples message to deliver.

For Hosted Voice to become widely used it needs to be simples !

It also helps when it is supported by one of the biggest networking companies in the world – and Cisco Systems fits the bill perfectly.

At UCExpo 2011 the Cisco FutureLine stand ( 504 ) will show and demonstrate the latest in Cisco S.M.B. telephony options.

Actually there are two audiences for Cisco FutureLine – the end user and the reseller. Clearly the reseller knows all the technical jargon but the end user does not – especially the S.M.B. end user.

The message needs to be simples to both but between Cisco FutureLine and resellers it may be ok to use the jargon.

It’s about communicating in the right way – taking into account who your audience is.

S.M.B. customers don’t know all the answers to questions like ” What features do you need ? ” – they are typically growing, dynamic businesses who are changing structure and direction quite often.

What they do need therefore is FLEXIBILITY and UPGRADABILITY.

They want to know that they can get a phone system that does the job right now but can grow to suit the needs of thier business in the future.

SIMPLES !!

Digium Asterisk based FutureLine at UC Expo 2011

Posted by Chris on February 19th, 2011

FutureLine  is one of the few Hosted Voice Solutions available that combines the power of Digium Asterisk with Cisco Systems amazing technology. A large percentage of Cisco’s networking equipment and end points are attached to Asterisk based voip pbx systems around the world, especially in the SMB sector ( around 30% ).

Digium sponsors, maintains and owns the Asterisk platform and devotes around 50% of its resources  to supporting the Asterisk project and ecosystem.

Digium was founded by Mark Spencer  in 1999  whilst still a computer engineering student.When faced with the high cost of buying a PBX for his company, Spencer used his Linux PC and knowledge of C code to develop his own PBX. This was the beginning of the worldwide open source phenomenon known as Asterisk.

As Asterisk gained in popularity, Spencer shifted his business focus from Linux support to supporting Asterisk and opening up the telecom market.

Mark renamed the company Digium and transformed the fledgling start-up into the leading open source telecommunications provider in the world that it is today.

Digium is also now the leading provider of commercially supported open source phone systems, as well as manufacturer of the hardware that supports Asterisk.

Digium’s Asterisk is fast becoming a major competitor to proprietary alternatives because of its compelling benefits, which include:

Asterisk Hosted Voice Benefits

There are a number of reasons why an  Asterisk-based  Hosted Voice system is a good choice.

It is  based on the world’s largest open source platform

Asterisk is the world’s leading open source telephony platform and the InfoWorld 2008 Technology of the Year.

Asterisk holds a 17% share of the global telephony market and offers a credible and proven alternative to proprietary systems.

Digium, the owner of Asterisk, is highlighted in Gartner’s prestigious visionary quadrant for the third year in a row.

It scales easily to suit your business needs

Our Asterisk based Hosted Voice systems are built on a scalable platform that can be easily modified to meet changing requirements.
Whether increasing, reducing, changing or moving your business, Asterisk Hosted Voice systems accommodate your business plans rather than your business adapting its plans. The flexibility to do what you want it to do is inbuilt.
Asterisk provides complete access and visibility to the system development. If there is something you need your system to do or something you don’t like, it can easily be incorporated.

FutureLine has the flexibility to meet any business requirement – the system can be altered at any stage to support changes in your business operation – even when you’re up and running.

It is great value for money

Our Asterisk based Hosted Voice systems provide incredible value for money compared to proprietary Hosted Voice systems. The reason for this is the reduced licensing development and marketing cost of the open source based business model.

The system comes complete. Unlike proprietary systems, there is no increment for each additional feature.

The freedom of choice of hardware and architecture

Asterisk is committed to open standards development ensuring seamless integration with a wide variety of vendor technologies and ability to expand using technologies not normally associated with most Hosted Voice platforms.

This allows you the most diverse choice of architecture and hardware options without restricting functionality.

FutureLine uses Cisco routers and telephones and video equipment but is able to connect to many other manufacturers equipment.

It is feature-rich and subject to constant innovation.

With Asterisk Hosted Voice systems, you can take advantage of the constant innovations of the open source community. The system comes fully equipped with every future requirement that you are likely to want and no “enhanced-version” add on charges.

For more information on FutureLine please go to

http://www.futureline.net.uk/

FutureLine Hosted Voip at UC Expo 2011 with Cisco

Posted by Chris on February 18th, 2011

FutureLine Hosted Voip will be at UC Expo 2011, Olympia, London from the 8 – 9th March on the Cisco Systems stand.

UC Expo is one of the premier U.K. events for CIOs, Business Managers, Technical Directors and associated professionals from organisations of every kind interested in Unified Communications.

As one of the leaders in Unified Communications Cisco Systems has made a major committment to UC Expo and FutureLine will be there for S.M.B.’s and other organisations interested in Hosted Voice and Unified Communications.

Andy Brocklehurst of Cisco will be one of the Cisco speakers and is quoted as saying:

“We are seeing an increasing demand for managed and hosted solutions in the voice space and this is especially the case for smaller businesses with less than 20 employees. FutureLine have a refreshingly new approach by addressing the key fundamentals of quality, security and ease of use and deployment. This is all underpinned by partnering with Cisco who fully understand how to manage different media provided by the various consumption models.”

Andy Brocklehurst
RSM Cisco Small Business

Clare Jenkins, M.D. of FutureLine, will be speaking at the event aswell. Further posts will give more details of Clare and Andy’s themes and also we will be posting about some exciting offers that FutureLine will be making to people interested in evaluating FutureLine’s Hosted Voice solutions.

For more information about FutureLine please go to:

http://www.futureline.net.uk/

or call Clare on

0871 594 3555 or

email her at: info@futureline.net.uk

New Cisco based Hosted Telephony system for Liverpool U.K.

Posted by Chris on January 21st, 2011

A new Cisco based Hosted Telephony service is available, via selected Cisco partners, in Liverpool, U.K.
Cisco Hosted Telephony ( otherwise known as Hosted Voip, Voice, Phones or  Hosted Unified Communications is particularly suitable for small and medium sized businesses and those with many small offices ( or small numbers of telephony users in each office ).

A representative from Cisco Systems comments:

“We are seeing an increasing demand for managed and hosted solutions in the voice space and this is especially the case for smaller businesses with less than 20 employees. FutureLine have a refreshingly new approach by addressing the key fundamentals of quality, security and ease of use and deployment. This is all underpinned by partnering with Cisco who fully understand how to manage different media provided by the various consumption models.”

Andy Brocklehurst
RSM Cisco Small Business UK

For more information please contact Clare at Futureline

http://www.futureline.net.uk/contact.html

for the chance to win an ipad go to

http://info.futureline.net.uk/win-an-ipad/

New Cisco based Hosted Telephony Service for Birmingham U.K.

Posted by Chris on January 21st, 2011

A new Cisco based Hosted Telephony service is available, via selected Cisco partners, in Birmingham, U.K.
Cisco Hosted Telephony ( otherwise known as Hosted Voip, Voice or  Hosted Unified Communications is particularly suitable for small and medium sized businesses and those with many small offices ( or small numbers of telephony users in each office ).

A representative from Cisco Systems comments:

“We are seeing an increasing demand for managed and hosted solutions in the voice space and this is especially the case for smaller businesses with less than 20 employees. FutureLine have a refreshingly new approach by addressing the key fundamentals of quality, security and ease of use and deployment. This is all underpinned by partnering with Cisco who fully understand how to manage different media provided by the various consumption models.”

Andy Brocklehurst
RSM Cisco Small Business UK

For more information please contact Clare at Futureline

http://www.futureline.net.uk/contact.html

for the chance to win an ipad go to

http://info.futureline.net.uk/win-an-ipad/

New Cisco based Hosted Telephony service for the City of London

Posted by Chris on January 19th, 2011

A new Cisco based Hosted Telephony service is available, via selected Cisco partners, in London City. Cisco Hosted Telephony ( otherwise known as Hosted Voip, Voice or  Hosted Unified Communications is particularly suitable for small and medium sized businesses and those with many small offices ( or small numbers of telephony users in each office ).

A representative from Cisco Systems comments:

“We are seeing an increasing demand for managed and hosted solutions in the voice space and this is especially the case for smaller businesses with less than 20 employees. FutureLine have a refreshingly new approach by addressing the key fundamentals of quality, security and ease of use and deployment. This is all underpinned by partnering with Cisco who fully understand how to manage different media provided by the various consumption models.”

Andy Brocklehurst
RSM Cisco Small Business UK

For more information please contact Clare at Futureline

http://www.futureline.net.uk/contact.html

Cisco hosted telephony for Northern Ireland

Posted by Chris on January 19th, 2011

A new Cisco based Hosted Telephony service is available, via selected Cisco partners, in Northern Ireland. Cisco Hosted Telephony ( otherwise known as Hosted Voip, Voice or  Hosted Unified Communications is particularly suitable for small and medium sized businesses and those with many small offices ( or small numbers of telephony users in each office ).

A representative from Cisco Systems comments:

“We are seeing an increasing demand for managed and hosted solutions in the voice space and this is especially the case for smaller businesses with less than 20 employees. FutureLine have a refreshingly new approach by addressing the key fundamentals of quality, security and ease of use and deployment. This is all underpinned by partnering with Cisco who fully understand how to manage different media provided by the various consumption models.”

Andy Brocklehurst
RSM Cisco Small Business UK

For more information please contact Clare at Futureline

http://www.futureline.net.uk/contact.html


Cisco Hosted Voice emerges from Dorset

Posted by Chris on January 13th, 2011

The Cisco FutureLine Hosted Voice solution has been developed by Dorset based Poundbury Systems. http://www.poundbury.com/

FutureLine ( http://www.futureline.net.uk/ ) appears to be a timely addition to the Cisco portfolio addressing quite neatly the lower end of the SMB market. A Cisco spokesperson said :

“We are seeing an increasing demand for managed and hosted solutions in the voice space and this is especially the case for smaller businesses with less than 20 employees. FutureLine have a refreshingly new approach by addressing the key fundamentals of quality, security and ease of use and deployment. This is all underpinned by partnering with Cisco who fully understand how to manage different media provided by the various consumption models.”

Andy Brocklehurst
RSM Cisco Small Busines

Supplied via existing and new Cisco resellers FutureLine enables them to provide customers with a low cost voice solution that grows and changes as the SMB grows and changes without there being any costly re-investments in voice infrastructure.

Previously Cisco small SMB prospects would have only been offered a UC500 based premises solution which was often too costly for the smaller customer.

Globally, solutions that combine Cisco end points with a Hosted Voice platform have been extremely popular.

Why choose a telephone system from Poundbury Systems?

We have range of options that not only suit your business, but can grow and change as your business does.

Flexible – Simple – Effective

The features you need, at a price you want.

All our Telephone Systems all contain the following features

Our standard telephone systems come with all the features below needed to successfully run any business. Apart from all these useful components, we can also customise your system to provide what you need for your individual business.

Free calls within your own company – All calls to your other offices or home workers equipped with our VoIP phone are entirely free of charge. Calls to other land lines and mobiles are cheaper than BT’s standard rates.

Lower call charges to everyone else – Our phone call charges are significantly lower than most national phone companies’ standard prices without compromising any quality.

Single Bill, Single Point of Contact – One bill and one phone call for all your calls, line rental, broadband and even your IT support.

Main number voice mail – Collected from the phone, remotely or by e-mail. Callers can leave a message out of hours or when your reception staff are busy, safe in the knowledge that their call will be returned swiftly.

Individual voice mails – Any employee you choose can have their own voice mail. Messages can then be forwarded to their e-mail account, mobile phone or can be accessed from their desk phone.

Individual call forwarding – Individual phones can be set to Do Not Disturb. Calls can be forwarded to other extensions, mobiles, home numbers etc.

Presence Indication – See when your colleagues are already on the phone – Have you ever transferred a call to somebody only to find that they are engaged? See with ease who is on the phone or available.

Fully customisable – You can turn on and off features, or add them at a later date.

Easy access to call reporting – Reports are available for you see exactly who has been calling where and for how long. These are issued automatically with each monthly bill.

Geography free – The system can receive numbers that are normally associated with different parts of the country – London for example.

Music on Hold – let your customers hear music while they are on hold.

Home workers – The system can support remote users so working from home becomes easier.

Road Warriors – The system can connect you with those members of staff who are always on the road.

Demonstrations

If you would like to see and try one of our phone systems, just call us and we will arrange for a free demonstration.

Additional Services
PSL can supply any other services you might need for your new telephone system, such as a broadband (ADSL) lines and routers. We can also provide servers, PC, e-mail and anti-spam service through to desktop PC support.

Common Additional Options:

Automatic greetings – Many professional companies are now or will soon be required by legislation to ensure industry specific announcements are made to each and every caller. Remove the worry for you and the hassle from your reception staff by recording the important messages and letting the system automatically play them for you.

Automatic call routing – Callers can choose 1 for sales 2 for accounts etc. This can save resources on reception and enable calls to be answered with more speed and efficiency.

Paging Service – Do you need to know about emergency calls out of hours? – No problem at all with our system.

Conference calls – Easily talk to any other group of people without the need to get in the car.

Personalised numbers – Individual users can have their own direct dial number – where only their phone will ring – ideal for you to give to your premium clients. These can be geographic i.e 01 or 02 numbers or non-geographic numbers such as 0800/0844/0871 etc

Multiple company numbers – The system can accept calls to multiple numbers and will display the number the caller has dialled – i.e. ‘Sales Order Line’.

Operator software – this can give specific users the ability to drag and drop incoming calls and see the status of all users within the organisation.

Company Specific Directories – these can be synchronised with ‘off phone lists’. Public folders in Microsoft Exchange can be linked to the phones for example.

Click to dial – allows you to select a number on your desktop and dial it by clicking with your mouse.
Screen pops – can show you information about who is calling and be linked to your other internal software, if the necessary external connectors are made available to us.

Time aware behaviour – The system can do different things automatically at different times of day. i.e. all calls to voicemail after 5.30pm.

Handsets
There are a choice of handsets and we can show you all the options at our demo facilities in Dorchester.

Driving Internet Leads for U.K. SMB using HubSpot Inbound Marketing

Posted by Chris on December 19th, 2010

This blog describes an effort to drive Internet leads for U.K. S.M.B. FutureLine using HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing process.

FutureLine ( http://www.futureline.net.uk/index.html ) is a U.K. based Hosted Voice solution being promoted to SMB’s and SMB resellers in conjunction with Cisco Systems. FutureLine addresses a particular demand from small SMB’s ( say 1-50 telephone users ) for a Cisco based hosted voice solution. The FutureLine solution allows small SMB’s to adopt Cisco solutions at a very low initial cost and then to upgrade seamlessly and inexpensively and grow as the business grows.

As a Hosted or SaaS ( Software as a Service ) solution it is believed to be best practise and important that the FutureLine website and FutureLine marketing messages be found by interested SMB buyers via Internet search.

It is believed that FutureLine’s target market will find FutureLine via Internet search to a very large degree and indeed the Internet Marketing efforts carried out so far bear this out as there have been a number of leads and indeed sales that came from Google searches.

I have been aware of HubSpot for some time ( see earlier blog posts on them ) and there are a number of interesting parallels here. For example:

  • HubSpot’s founder, Brian Halligan, founded HubSpot when investing in and mentoring SMB’s. He realised that a different marketing approach was required to really drive sales.
  • HubSpot has a dual focus on the SMB end user and the SMB reseller as with FutureLine.
  • HubSpot has a very sales orientated approach which fits with the sales philosophy that we and FutureLine believe in. We all believe in tracking visits, leads and actual sales.

Those involved in this effort are already aware of some of the main principles of on Internet marketing e.g. the importance of relevant content, on and off page optimisation and good, powerful links.

We are also aware of the main components of the HubSpot solution e.g. website usage tracking, content management, SEO, CRM etc etc

We also have a network of experienced and potentially suitable contacts and resources, including website designers, SEO specialists, Social Media Marketing experts, CRM consultants, HubSpot qualified resource, Sales and Marketing specialists, P.R. Experts and Business Strategy and Business Value Creation specialists.

We decided that, in this instance, whilst it was obviously very important to generate leads for FutureLine it was also important to work through and prove the HubSpot process thoroughly.

It was decided that the first tasks included a thorough review of FutureLine’s target markets ( even though this has been done before ) which are broadly SMB end users and SMB ICT ( voice,data, PC/Server/Application ) resellers and a review of the message to each of these target markets.

It was also important to install HubSpot tracking and content management code on the FutureLine website so that we can gat a clear picture of the situation regarding visits, leads and sales , now and in the future.

Further posts will follow as we work through the effort.


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