Land grab steams ahead in the Virtual PBX space – Larry Lisser

May 15, 2010 — FonGenie: Our phone automation service will boost your small business sales, or we’ll give you $500
By Larry Lisser

 

“The Virtual PBX market is hot. After eight years of seeding by a handful of leading providers, the market now finds itself in a perfect storm.” — Larry Lisser

Excerpt of Larry Lisser’s article:
FonGenie: This is a newcomer, packaged as a phone service that enables sales and marketing for small businesses (particularly service providers). Under the hood, it shares some similarities to a conventional VPBX, but its feature set and messaging focus on things like screen pop, automated caller interaction and CRM management. Good one to watch.

There are many more of course, like Phone.com that offers VPBX services but doubles as a home phone service – figuring the work place, the mobile and home phones flow into one another anyway. They also leans on a creative affiliate program, among other things, to drive growth.

Bottom Line: 18 months ago this market looked like a me-too one in every way. Now, with the land grab in full motion, we’re witnessing that even in a maturing market, there is room for creative positioning.

The 5+ millions prospects for these services should rejoice; these services can only get better, more productive – and cheaper. Now if we could just find a better name for it…

 

Read the entire Larry Lisser article online, and please leave your comments.