For Sipgate, the share of the company's business is growing more strongly than that of private customers. Nevertheless, since 2004, VoIP solutions (Internet telephony) companies continue to register more private individuals in their customer register - however, the companies bring more sales than private end customers.
Sipgate: Slack is not a competitor
At the CeBIT in Hanover, COMPUTER BILD had the opportunity to ask Sipgate CEO Tim Mois about basic questions regarding telephony, communication and office day of the future. What is most interesting, of course, is how the company would like to get to grips with hard competitors like WhatsApp in the private customer and, for example, Slack in the business customer area. In Slack, however, Tim Mois does not see a direct, but rather an abstract competitor against which the company does not want to "compete". Slack and Sipgate solutions, but other target groups: Slack is ideal for internal company communication, the telephony as well as mails are the gate to the outside. By the way: Internally the Sipgate staff does not communicate via telephony,
Telefonie first - Chat second
Sipgate specializes in the subject of telephony, which is, of course, also their core business. Although there are room for thought to offer text communication in the future, the solutions of telephone systems are clearly in the foreground. The Sipgate CEO emphasizes that classical telephone systems have been used up and companies are looking for more flexible solutions that allow ad hoc telephone connections to be switched off and deactivated - without the need for a technician to be ordered locally. On the one hand, this has to do with the much more agile market compared to a few years ago, but also the way in which work has changed: Home Office is no longer the exception in some companies, but the rule.
Sipgate: office to go
And for these cases, flexible solutions are required, if the consultant should not call his customers over his private handynummer, but over the classical office telephone number. Sipgate allows the same in cooperation with Telefónica: Festnetznummern are usable with mobile phones - so not only does the caller see the already known and professional-looking Festnetznummer, but reaches the customer adviser over just this. With solutions such as Gmail integration and telephony directly through the browser, this is even more flexible and enabled - the user does not have to switch from the browser to the VoIP software - more productively, since trouble-free working.
"E-mail is the new fax"
A "telephone technology" however had served: the fax. Because the originally analogue standard creates problems with digitized lines. In the course of the ongoing disconnection of ISDN, there are solutions for this - 100 percent of the devices can no longer be shipped from device to device, according to Tim Mois. If a page is digital, ie the fax is received digitally in the form of a mail attachment, the problem is solved. However, the legal certainty, which, for example, requires courts and lawyers to exchange hands, is no longer valid. Inevitably, authorities need to see that fax messages e-mails deviate and legislators must adopt appropriate regulations, predicts the Sipgate boss.
WhatsApp has a crucial drawback
As far as telephony is concerned, Tim Mois sees the private customer area much more complicated: as services such as WhatsApp and Skype fragment the private telephony, but never put it on the pellet. Because everyone has a phone, but a smartphone almost everyone - but not yet WhatsApp or Skype. And: Telephony also works when mobile interception is insufficient. However, the mobile phone itself is the biggest competitor Sipgate has in the now weaker growing private customer sector. However, there should be no concessions for this: If new solutions are implemented for companies, the development has taken place both for the business customer and the private customer sector - so there would be no second class customer.
Listening: The phone stays on
Finally, COMPUTER BILD philosophized with the Sipgate Managing Director about the future. Tim Mois is sure: the technology behind the phone will continue to develop incessantly. The classic telephone handset is still preserved for some time - although telephone calls in the same quality could be managed directly from the computer. The process is digitized anyway.