Upstart sets pace in VoIP sales race

New entrant into the IP telephony space in Australia, Zultys Technologies, has announced a licensing deal aimed at sparking a customer stampede to VoIP ahead of major competitors such as Cisco and Avaya.

The two-year-old US-based vendor began operating in Australia in May.

Tony Warhurst, national sales manager at Zultys Australia, said the new licensing program for its five to 250-user MX250 IP PBX would lower the cost of adopting VoIP and enable customers to try what is still a technology in the relatively early phase of business adoption without committing to anything long term.

'I don't know of anyone else doing this,' Warhurst said. 'Rather than sitting on the fence and getting splinters, I'm pretty confident that if they give [VoIP] a go, they won't regret it.'

Zultys' MX250 targets mid-size companies looking at trying VoIP, which Warhurst claimed represent 75 to 80 percent of the potential VoIP market in the Australian enterprise space.

The program differs from the more usual leasing-type arrangement because the customer owns the hardware from day one and can thus on-sell it, as long as the new owner knows about and accepts the licensing arrangement, he said.

'Also, we don't do a credit check,' he added.

Warhurst said the MX250 technology's functionality could be shut down if the user failed to meet its financial commitments to Zultys, limited the risk to the vendor.

Zultys' seven resellers thus wouldn't need to deal with 'huge' financial company contracts to manage the program, he said.

Companies can deploy the VoIP set up for 30, 60 or 90 days, at the end of which the customer may elect to extend its license for another period without having the gear re-possessed, he said.

Zultys offers the MX250 for RRP $2000 and prospective program participants must fork out another $6500 for at least 25 Zultys ZIP 2 phones and a monthly $759.98 licensing fee. After 36 months, the monthly payments cease and the system is owned outright. Warhurst said.

He conceded that the VoIP system was more expensive than a traditional key-type telephone system but argued that the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) would likely be lower.

'If you make adds, moves and changes, you need to have cables [in traditional PBX] and so on,' he said.

A Zultys reseller had made one implementation where the TCO for the VoIP system had come in $80,000 to $90,000 for a setup with around 90 in-points, Warhurst claimed.

'A medium-size company looking at trying VoIP might pay $30,000 to $40,000 up for a telephone system, that comes down to $8500 a month. Then, if it doesn't work out ... they can give it back,' he said. 'And if it goes to from 25 to 35 users after 12 months, there's no extra hardware required with our box.'

The MX250 - launched in Australia in July - had internet and PSTN gateways, voicemail, automated attendants, ACD groups, a firewall and a single administrative GUI that could enable new users in 30 seconds, the company claimed.