Jim Van Meggelen of CORETEL: Telecom Growth Happening Below Radar

Jim Van Meggelen

Jim Van Meggelen of CORETEL explains that high definition phone calls are the next big thing; the advantages of working with companies that are tailored to the OBC industry and the proliferation of integration between telecom, Internet and mobile applications.

Can you give us a brief background of your company?
We started Core Telecom Innovations Inc. in 2005 out of a desire to bring the power of open source telephony to business. Our sister company, iConverged, was started one year later by the same partners in order to better address the needs of the US market (we run both companies as a single entity, with the same partners and team). Our experience in the traditional telecom industry had shown us that the incumbent industry players were not willing or able to embrace the possibilities inherent in VoIP technology and internet-enabled applications. We believed that this climate was full of opportunities for visionaries who could stake a claim in this new world. Most importantly, for us, open source telecom made our jobs fun again.

Tell me something unique about your company.
Our exclusive use of open source technology at the heart of all our products is something that we have been doing since the beginning, and now is being embraced by even the largest of the traditional industry players. We are very focused on the vertical market, in the sense that we are able to develop telephony applications that are tailored to the needs of a particular industry, and because we are a small, dynamic company, we are able to quickly respond to the needs of our customers, and enhance our products in response to the ever-changing needs of modern businesses.

What service or product has the most potential for growth?
There are two perspectives from which I would answer that question.

From our perspective, we remain committed to products that focus on the needs of specific industries. Our work in the Office Business Center community is a reflection of this. There is a popular book called “The Innovator’s Dilemma” that discusses how small, creative companies can succeed where larger companies cannot. We feel that much of the growth in the telecom industry will happen below the radar, where small, innovative companies will deliver products that the traditional manufacturers will have a difficult time competing with.

From the perspective of the telecom industry as a whole, I think that high definition (HD) voice is going to become very popular. This technology is based on standards that have been around for a long time, so there are no patents to encumber innovation, and everyone in the industry is now building this capability into their products. Once you have heard a high definition phone call, it is hard to go back to normal-quality telecom.

There will also be more and more integration between telecom, internet and mobile applications. This is something that the telecom industry has been promising for decades, however now that the barriers to entry have been lowered by the widespread adoption of open source, I think there will be an explosion of innovation, similar to what happened to the Internet in the early 90s (the Internet was almost 30 years old at that time, but had yet to gain widespread adoption).

What has changed within CTI over the past two years?
I believe wider adoption of the XMPP (Jabber) protocol will have the greatest impact, even though it is not something a person on the street would be aware of. This technology is a real-time messaging protocol, similar to Instant Messenger, however it is based on a standard that will work well with web services (XML). What this means to telecom is that it will become far easier to integrate telephony applications with both internet and mobile applications.

A very basic example of an Jabber-enabled application might work something like this: A call comes into your PBX and is transferred to your extension. The PBX sends a Jabber message out to your cell phone, which contains information about who is calling, and is able to handle responses from you as to what to do with that call (such as ‘transfer to voice mail’, ‘reject’, ‘transfer to assistant’, ‘connect to me’, etc). If, for example, you selected ‘connect to me’, the PBX would inform the caller that you were on your mobile, and it will connect their call. Your cell phone rings and you can take the call. A Jabber-enabled switchboard would be able to offer similar capabilities to a telephone console operator, and mobile users could use a Jabber connection to pass messages to the attendant.

Of course, there is nothing new in all this in terms of what is being promised to the user. We have been promised these sorts of applications for years, and so I would expect anyone who has dealt with the promises of the telecom industry to be skeptical. However, this standard is the first I have seen that does not require web developers to wade through complex and confusing telephony standards, nor purchase expensive and confusing licenses, which means the barriers to entry will be much lower. Also, the proliferation of smart phones with powerful data connectivity, such as the BlackBerry and iPhone, will make it easier to inexpensively deliver the mobile applications. It is only very recently that we can say that having internet-enabled PBXs and mobile phones is becoming ubiquitous, and having a standard that any developer can download (http://xmpp.org/rfcs/) increases the likelihood that a larger community of innovators will attempt to work with it. As we saw with the internet 15 years ago, when the barriers to entry are lowered, innovation flourishes.

Tell us about your background and how you got into the industry.
I started in the telecom business when I was 19 years old. At that time the only experience I had with PBXs was some basic programming on the system at the hotel I was working at. I quickly demonstrated a knack for the business, put myself through a few college courses in the evenings, and worked for that same company for 14 years.
When I discovered Asterisk, far and away the most successful of the open source telecom platforms, I felt that here was the future of telecom. I felt so passionate about it that I quit my job, and wrote a book about it (Asterisk: The Future of Telephony, 2007 O’Reilly and Associates). That book has been translated in to at least a half-dozen languages, and has been downloaded over one million times (you can obtain a copy for yourself for free at www.asteriskdocs.org, just click on the picture of the book cover). We are now working on the third edition. The growth of Asterisk is such that it is now the most widely-deployed PBX of any kind.

What are your responsibilities?
Among my many responsibilities, I am responsible for keeping current on the state of the art when it comes to emerging technology. The challenge is to find a balance between the desire to embrace new and innovative thinking, and the need to ensure that we only adopt technology that is stable and has a proven track record.

What do you enjoy most about your job?
I love working with people. While I am a big fan of the technology, what brings me real satisfaction is solving problems. The technology is simply a means to an end.

What motivates you?
It’s easy to be motivated when you are doing something you love. We have had a very clear vision from the start of what open source telecom would do to the telecom industry as a whole, and we have seen many of our predictions come true. This is very motivating, as it confirms that we are on the right track.

What is your proudest accomplishment with your company?
I am most proud of our High Availability technology, which allows for a completely redundant standby telephone system, which can automatically take over from a failure of the primary system within seconds. In effect, this means that you can have a completely redundant PBX as a standby system, which can take over all functions from the main system within seconds. This means that we can deliver a system that has carrier-grade reliability, for a price that competes with traditional PBX systems. I have always wanted to build a high-availability system that does not require expensive, proprietary hardware, and this has proven to be a very popular option in our systems.

What is your greatest challenge over the next year or two?
Our biggest challenge is managing growth. This is of course the sort of challenge that any young business wants to have, but it has to be handled correctly if the business is to succeed. We have an excellent advisory board, a solid management team, and a great team of people who work with us, and we have managed to sustain growth through a very difficult recession. We are looking forward to tackling the challenges we will face as we grow our company over the next few years.

What does your company get out of or hope to get out of – its membership in OBCAI?
For the most part, we are interested in contributing. We believe that it is very important to demonstrate to OBCAI members that we are here for the long term; that we are building our business in response to the needs of their businesses. One of the contributions we are making is the hosting of the OBC Forum, a place where OBCAI members (and really anyone interested in the office business center industry) can get together and share advice. We plan to be active participants in the technology forums. Given the extensive experience we have in the field of telecommunications, we’re pretty sure we can contribute some valuable advice. More importantly, we have met other people in the OBC community who have their own wealth of knowledge, and we’re quite certain that some of these people would be only too happy to share what they have learned with their peers. An online forum is the ideal way to accomplish this.

How do you spend time outside of work? What are your hobbies?
I have three kids, so a big part of my free time is spent with them. Also, because of the book, I am asked to speak at conferences all over North America and Europe, so I get to travel several times per year, which I could only consider a hobby since I love it so much. One of my favorite just-for-me activities is improvisation theatre. I am a student at a little theatre here in Toronto, and recently, while on a business trip, was able to perform in St. Petersburg (FKA Leningrad), with Russia’s very first improv troupe. I have also been trying to get back into singing, which I used to do a lot of when I was younger, and lost. We’ll see how that goes; my voice is quite badly out of tune.