Blueface, Ireland’s leading internet telephony provider has teamed-up with Panasonic Solution Company Europe (PSCEU) to provide an exclusive new offer on the Panasonic KX-TGP500 cordless SIP phone system that brings together the advantages of modern internet HD VoIP voice calls, business phone functionality and easy web based administration.  The exciting new offer means that when customers purchase one KX-TPA50 handset, they will get a second handset free of charge. The KX-TGP500 SIP phone system is an ideal telephone solution for SME’s and sole traders operating in a small office home office (SOHO). The system can be used for business calls with the second handset serving as the dedicated household phone.

For just €99 (ex VAT) buyers receive a Panasonic KX-TPA50 handset along with the KX-TGP500 base unit with one included KX-TPA50 handset. For situations where more than two handsets are required, customers may purchase additional systems with the two for one offer also applicable for multiple purchases.

“This is a win-win deal for Blueface customers who can avail of the low-cost and flexible telephone solutions we provide along with the two smart Panasonic user- friendly handsets,” said Alan Foy, CEO, Blueface.

“We are pleased to team up with Blueface to bring this unique offer to SMEs and the home office market,” added Bob Mercer, Area Sales Manager at Panasonic. “This initiative is an indicator of Panasonic’s development in the provision of telecommunications solutions and Blueface, who are a forward-looking innovative telecommunications company provide an ideal partner for us.”

The KX-TGP500 SIP phone system offer which is exclusive to Blueface customers comes with support for three simultaneous network conversations, support for up to eight SIP registrations and a hands-free speaker phone on cordless handset.

Blueface, Ireland’s leading internet telephony provider today brought together global and local speakers and industry experts to discuss the future of the phone and new horizons in communications, at a conference which took place at the Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin. The event commenced with an opening address from Minister for Communications, Energy & Natural Resources, Mr Pat Rabbitte TD. and was attended by Industry Professionals, Business People, IT service providers and telecoms experts.

The conference focused on the major trends in the communications industry and undertook a futuristic examination of how communications, telecoms and telephony services will fundamentally change over the next decade. Speakers at this morning’s event included, among others, senior executives from Panasonic Global, Ericsson Europe, H3G Ireland, Blueface, Satellite Broadband Ireland, Emutex and the Telecoms Institute at Trinity College.

Alan Foy, CEO, Blueface, commented: “With the advent of social networking, ubiquitous devices and internet connectivity, we see the consumer market driving more innovation into the business market. Small businesses can now take advantage of these great new services, including IP telephony, to drive business forward and affordable prices. Blueface is committed to the SME market and delivers a tailored, big business communications services at a small business price.”

During the conference there was a series of relevant, thought provoking, keynote addresses from leaders of Irish companies and MNC’s in communications, software and internet businesses.  Themes discussed included, communications as a service (CaaS), IP telephony, mobile convergence, unified communications and collaboration (UC&C), technology including application development and the rise of the smartphone.

Blueface offers targeted solutions for small to medium sized business customers and earlier this year developed an innovative new app, which gives iPhone users a ‘virtual landline number’ that can save users up to 90% on calls. Another innovative offering for SMEs is the Emutex VMX ‘office in a box’ solution for up to 128 extensions. Blueface also teamed up with Panasonic to produce an affordable SME offering, a scalable plug and play product, which can efficiently cater for a wide variety of business sizes, from a 1-2 person business right to up to a 6-8 person organisation.

The recent price hikes by Eircom at a time when businesses need to keep costs down in order to maintain competitiveness internationally  and pay the monthly bills is just another illustration of the incumbent’s  lack of appreciation of the enormous loyalty SME customers have shown them with over seven out of ten SME using Eircom as their supplier in the past.

But in the new arena of business survival, it is interesting to note that business are starting to review their costs with 26% of business claiming  to have changed their telecommunication supplier in the past 12 months in a recent InterTrade Ireland survey.

Interestingly, organisations in the south are more likely to have switched operators 30% vs. 16^% in the north which shows that businesses are starting  to tap into the alternative telecoms providers. Of course, when it come to Blueface we not only offer considerable cost saving but we also believe that SME should have access to big business services at a small business price!

So if you’re reading this blog you’re probably one of the 30% who have made the switch already but if you have business friends and colleagues who need a helping hand, pass this on.

Catrina

Who’d have thunk it?! Email hasn’t replaced the fax machine just yet! Blueface experienced the busiest week of faxing ever last week – the electronic fax service was in constant use both day and night. The fax to email / email to fax service is a means of replacing a traditional fax machine and getting rid of another nasty line rental bill. It turns faxing into a more email-like experience for when you really need to use fax. Which for many people is a lot more often than I’d have thought!

The Blueface office fax machine is squirreled away in a cupboard somewhere and is only occasionally dusted down to make tests. For most companies, email has replaced faxing as the best means of transmitting documents. That’s the view taken 5 years ago when I was very sceptical (to put it mildly!) about introducing a fax to email/email to fax service. However it seemed to be a good solution for people who did want to send faxes, but no longer had a phone line (using Blueface for their phone service and avoiding line rental!). So we introduced it back in 2005 sometime and I’ve been amazed ever since!

I know that many banks and legal institutions use fax extensively – I can’t email my bank for example which seems bizarre in the 21st century but then what’s not bizarre about banking in Ireland?! A whole range of other industries use faxing extensively – from contractors sending back timesheets to doctors sending prescriptions. There’s no sign of demand for faxing abating anytime soon.

The service works by attaching your document to an email, and sending it to the fax number @fax.blueface.ie – just like sending a normal email. However the Blueface fax service receives the message and transmits the attached document to the number specified by you. Similarly, when someone sends a fax to your Blueface fax number, the service takes the fax and sends it to your email address as an attachment.

Back to the numbers – last week we handled just over 23,000 faxes, with a peak throughput of 907 per hour. This has grown by about 25% on the same period last year.

It seems there’s life in that fax machine yet!

Feargal

This is a sad week to be Irish, wherever you may be in the world. Our country’s economic and financial vulnerability has been exposed and the lack of leadership in our political classes has been cringingly on view for the world to see. I’d be surprised if most Irish people didn’t feel embarrassed and hurt by the events of the recent weeks.  It appears that our European partners (creditors) have come to our rescue and that the IMF/EU bailout is a fait accompli.

However, the choices and jockeying for position made by our political leaders (across the party spectrum) have almost fuelled the embarrassment of the typical Irish person. At a time of national distress and emergency, it appears that politicians in this country are grossly unaware of their national duty to leave party politics aside, lay down their differences and knuckle down to work together and agree creative solutions as a cross-party national government. The infighting and cross fighting of our political “leaders” has left me baffled and reinforces the perspective that we are unable to coordinate our own affairs.  It’s time, I believe, for our Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, to recognise that he is vastly out of his depth and must now resign. His resignation papers should be handed to our President and she must form and install a Council of State with suitably qualified personnel to manage the country’s affairs for at least the next 6 months. At this time our country needs stability and it appears that this may be the last, only viable solution open to us.  This is an emergency situation and requires an appropriate response.

Our government has agreed to bailout terms which seem very expensive but we don’t have full visibility on exactly what’s been agreed. Many have commented in the media that our €85bn package falls far short of the total sum required over the next number of years. This may indeed be true. 20% of this bailout will actually be pulled from our National Pension Reserve Fund (NPRF), one of the few assets we have accumulated as a nation over the last number of years.  The issue though, I believe, is that the average Irish person does not know the extent of the problems facing our country, or for that matter, who the senior bondholders we’re protecting in our banks actually are. Haircuts or no haircuts, the Irish people need transparency at this difficult time.  We don’t have full visibility and we are repeatedly being left in the dark.  In my view, there’s no point prescribing the medicine without first advising the patient of the full diagnosis.

Notwithstanding the above, I believe that we can get out of this mess by deploying the appropriate talent, decisiveness and corrective action.  We have an amazingly talented pool of individuals in the business classes of this country. We have some of the most creative minds in industry and enterprises across the state. The really unfortunate thing is that none of them went into politics.  The brightest and the best steered well clear of Dail Eireann which is a crying shame. We need to reform our political system to encourage the participation of talented individuals who have the competence and talent to be more than just strong orators.  We need strong negotiators, commercially savvy and expert individuals in our political classes. We need to fundamentally alter the structure and political systems we employ to facilitate the introduction of that talent.  We need to make the choices required to reduce the size of our political institutions and to reflect a fair, balanced representation of perspectives.   The days of nepotistic behaviour, and tweedle dums and tweedle dee politics need to end, today.

It’s not all doom and gloom of course.  We have a vibrant entrepreneurial and business base with some of the best companies in Europe – each of which punch above their weight on an international scale, on a daily basis,.  We need to encourage, not stifle, the innovation and productivity of our private sector.  We need to support entrepreneurs as they grow and scale their businesses with the full might of supports we can reasonably offer. To do this, we need a pro-business government that recognises the value of supporting SME’s.  We need to mandate that institutions (public and private) support them in every way possible.  A clear vision and trajectory for this support needs to be presented and the role the banks must play should be clearly explained, to them and to entrepreneurs!  Among all the “talk” about bailouts, commentators, politicians and senior civil servants must clearly present a stated objective and plan to ignite the entrepreneurial base once more. We forget that the engine of growth of this Irish economy is the Small to Medium-sized Enterprise (SME). These companies and firms, and the great people they employ, represent Ireland’s only path to economic and fiscal resurgence.   What are our leaders doing to assist in this renaissance?

Alan Foy

What is an Entrepreneur? It all depends on who’s talking. Members of the political class, media, industry, academia, and the general public have a variety of perspectives on entrepreneurship.   Often, it means something altogether different for each cohort.  The unfortunate thing about entrepreneurship, however, is that it is sometimes completely misunderstood, and worse still, entrepreneurs themselves are viewed as having almost enigmatic and somewhat obscure personalities.  Are they mad, attention seeking, unscrupulous, greedy, independent, ingenious or terrifying?  Or are they simply misunderstood?

Our perspectives are often driven by a textbook definition which can be a linear interpretation of what it means to be an entrepreneur.   From a leadership perspective, we apply a “great man theory” lens to entrepreneurs.  We assume that they have some magical, charismatic and mystic quality that makes them entrepreneurs.  At some levels, we believe that entrepreneurs are born, not made.  They take risks that the ordinary man or woman would not take.  Why?  Because they have some extraordinary genius that makes them, well, entrepreneurs…

Personally, I would like to challenge that thinking.  Firstly, I would argue that having met a range of highly successful entrepreneurs in Ireland over the last few years, that each one of them would attribute their success to the team they have around them.  People are key.  In fact, the most successful would put even more emphasis and value on the people that surround them; their attitude, their teamwork, their energy and their competence.  The most successful companies of all time have built high energy “hot spots” (check out the book by Lynda Gratton) and which are built around cultures of performance.  High performance people create high performance cultures.  The problem is that “culture” is a very esoteric and fluffy term.  From the start-ups and SME’s that I have seen, the culture of a business is created and built by people working in the business.  Culture is more than the original founder, although they have a huge impact on the business.  But it’s more than them.  It’s a collective thing, a way of operating and set of behaviours, all of which are reinforced by the team.   The entrepreneur is more like a team captain.  They are not the team, they are a part of it.

Secondly, in my opinion, entrepreneurship is about innovation.  It’s not all about the next big thing.  It’s not all about revolutionary, game changing technology.  We can be entrepreneurial in existing businesses.  We can find new, better and more innovative ways of doing business and serving our customer.  Some of the most recent successful, enterprising ideas have been centred around business model innovation like DELL or Amazon or Ryanair.   I can safely say that the majority of entrepreneurs don’t see visions of the future and then arrive back on earth to prepare a business plan and seek funding.   Business, as in life, just doesn’t work that way.   Entrepreneurship is about serving a need or a gap and fixing it.  I would even go so far as to say that most inventions have been a reaction to a gaping lack of something and a clear, identifiable need.  It’s not about sitting on top of some mountain somewhere and strategising.  It’s about knowing your customer and their needs and doing everything in your power to serve them and address those needs.   Entrepreneurship firstly involves identifying gaps and weaknesses in the current order of things.  But coupled with this, entrepreneurship involves actually doing something about it.   This is what differentiates entrepreneurs and this is potentially why we elevate them to celebrity status.   But we forget that sometimes these entrepreneurs weren’t so visionary, so talented or so lucky.  Sometimes they needed to make a living.  They had to take a risk which led them down a path they might not ordinarily have chosen.  They committed themselves to a course and a trajectory, which either worked or did not.  But it’s safe to say, they almost never went it alone.

Alan Foy

Calling all Entrepreneurs!

Blueface are sponsoring The Entrepreneur Show which runs on Friday and Saturday (April 23rd and 24th). This is a fantastic event which Blueface are delighted to be involved in. There are some great speakers lined up including some of the Irish and UK dragons; there are a host of companies exhibiting and of course some tremendous prizes on offer too!

Take a look at: The Entrepreneur Show

Blueface are also launching a new product at the show which has been designed specifically for the Irish Entrepreneur. It is yet another revolutionary product and one which I think will raise quite a few eyebrows!

We have a stand at the show where we will be very pleased to meet with existing and new customers – we will be on stand E3 which is just inside the main entrance and over to the right, next to Google’s stand.

Oh – did I mention we’re giving away an iPad?

See you there!

Feargal

Blueface were at the Digital Media Awards last Thursday and it was nice to see such an array of talent across all of the categories. We sponsored the Best in Blogging category where the competition was intense. Ronan Lyons was selected by the judges in the end as overall winner for his entry at ronanlyons.com. This is a collection of Ronan’s analyses on the economy and it is well worth a visit on a regular basis. It is fantastic to see such prodigious talent make their work available for general consumption. That is the great thing about blogging in one sense – it democratizes information and can make it so much more accessible than academic commentary. Its not always necessary to dumb down material to make it palatable, its just necessary to explain it well. I have to confess to being a big fan of independent economic thinking and informed analysis. Incidentally for those people interested in the genesis of our current global crisis, Joseph Stiglitz’ books ‘The Roaring Nineties, provides excellent background material. Nouriel Roubini’s website, rgemonitor.com is also full of useful and in some cases essential commentary and background material. Many informed analysts and economists had been predicting this global financial crisis for many years, and of course Ireland was severely affected by it for a variety of reasons. I read recently an article which described Credit Default Swaps as like taking out insurance on your neighbour’s house – you have an inherent interest in seeing it burned down! So Ronan Lyons’ blog is of particular interest at a time like this when many people are looking for answers and informed well reasoned commentary.

All of the other entries were highly rated too – the Gold Medal winner Brightspark contains a wealth of information and should be required reading for anyone involved in online marketing or marketing in general. This is a source of free advice and tips which is continuously updated with real life examples, so it is relevant, insightful and doesn’t cost anything!

Curious Wines is a wonderful blog full of information on wine from all over the world, with additional material on food and wine matching, recipes and all sorts of other treasures. The Story is at the same time heart-breaking and inspiring and I challenge anyone to remain unmoved – donate here

The Story – thestory.ie is another example of information and analysis brought to the public from an independent source. There’s nothing quite so powerful as information and having a source to arm oneself with background to many of the current affairs stories in Ireland is invaluable. The people should not be afraid of the state – the state should be afraid of the people!

mulley.net is the home of Damien Mulley whom I was looking out for on Thursday but unfortunately failed to meet up with. I’m a big fan of both the blog and the informative and irreverent views on current affairs.

The Grand Prix award was won by Kavaleer Productions for a beautiful animated feature and there was a special award for grannyogrimm which is up for an oscar for best animated short film.

Overall the breadth of talent on display was inspiring. It is reassuring to know that despite the current climate and the gloomy outlook, the future for this particular sector is bright.

Thanks to all at Ashville for superb organisation and to all the entrants for having the courage to stand up and be counted.

Feargal

Emmet Ryan(left) pictured here beside Feargal Brady of Blueface, Emmet collected the award on behalf of www.ronanlyons.com

There’s been lots of talk about VoIP recently and how it has come of age in many ways. The infrastructure required to support voice calls (i.e the broadband landscape) has changed considerably in Ireland over the past 5 years in particular. There is no question that we still have a long way to go and the questions over the sale or privatisation of public infrastructure won’t go away any time soon.

It’s not ideal that a piece of infrastructure which is vital to the economic success, and indeed the very viability, of the state is largely owned by external investors with no vested interest in Ireland Inc’s future. There are excellent arguments to be made around operating the fixed line network as a state owned monopoly, managed by a private company (who are appointed by tender process) and this infrastructure provided to private enterprise in an open access way. This is a system which could foster innovation and real competition in the marketplace rather than the me-too offerings and marketing-led competition which prevails today.

That being said, we’ve gotten to the point where external shocks to the traditional telecoms landscape are producing results which will have far-reaching consequences for telecommunications (which it is quaintly known as for now!). Google Voice is creating quite a stir in the US by taking control of communications away from the traditional operators. This is a similar method to that employed by Blueface in providing a communications service rather than a phone service. AT&T have recommended that the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) put the traditional PSTN out of it’s misery and move to an all-IP network. In some Northern European countries it will not be possible to buy an ISDN line by the end of 2010 – SIP trunks have become standard. And Verizon have just announced full support for Skype on their mobile service with unlimited data plans.

This maelstrom of activity is unprecedented in telecoms history. The entire value chain is moving inexorably away from call-based billing, and a future of free calls is looming very near indeed. So many people have questioned the value of the VoIP operator and whether companies like Blueface can prosper in a world where calls are free. In fact, Blueface have just launched the free calls for life promotion which sees customers paying €199 for a cordless phone and unlimited Irish landline calls for life. How is this sustainable? In Blueface we know where the industry is heading, and we understand exactly what is needed to survive and thrive in the 21st century.

The idea of paying for calls may be dying rapidly but what people want now is a means of managing their communications in a more effective and time-efficient manner. In other words telecoms is becoming a service based business rather than a utility. So in fact we are moving from a commodotised industry with very little differentiation to a service based industry with distinct differentiation. Companies like Blueface are ideally positioned to benefit from this paradigm shift having embraced IP and web enablement many years ago.

So VoIP isn’t just about saving money – although its a very nice side benefit! Its about communicating more effectively and efficiently. We in Blueface hope that you enjoy and benefit from the services we provide, and look forward to providing you with many more over the coming years. The emperor may or may not have any clothes, but n0 one is really looking for the emperor any more!

Feargal

Number Porting has always been a really tedious long drawn out task for us and our customers. Back in 2005  the lead-time was several weeks and it was really expensive. Since then, Blueface have continuously worked to reduce the costs and lead-time of number porting for our customers. Now it takes 2 weeks to port numbers.

Number Porting in 1 Day

However, plans are afoot for number porting to be completed in just 1 day. Mobile phone customers have for years been able to port numbers on the same day without the rigmarole associated with porting Geographic numbers so we look forward to being able to provide a more effective & efficient service. This is very welcome news for everyone who wants to keep their phone number when they change service provider. The Comreg  Geographic Number Porting Steering Group (GNPSG) is working with various operators including Blueface to have this in place next year.

We look forward to similar pro-active initiatives managed by Comreg and Supported by industry operators like Blueface.