VOIPs the hot marketing idea
My inbox is starting to look eerily similar to the way it did in 1999, when it was filling up with e-mailed press releases from scores of online auction sites and free Internet service providers in Brazil, where I was working at the time. Now it's voice over Internet protocol companies in South Florida.
Everybody who is anybody -- and plenty of nobodies -- is getting into VOIP, a technology that transmits phone calls via the Internet.
VOIP is probably here to stay. The technology costs callers just pennies a minute, and the voice quality has improved in the past year.
Here are just a sampling of some of the companies that have sent me e-mails in recent years regarding their VOIP services: CR Technologies, AT&T, ISN Telecom, BellSouth, VoIP Inc., Voiceglo, i2Telecom International and Avaya. And that's just a small sample.
How many of them will still be in VOIP five years from now? One thing we learned from the Internet boom of the late 1990s is that even if the technology survives, not all the competitors will.
The winners will likely be companies with the deepest pockets because they will be able to outspend their competitors on marketing and undercut them on pricing. A few others that can somehow capture the public's imagination -- like Yahoo! and Amazon.com did in the early days of Internet mania -- might also succeed. But they will be the exception, not the rule.
And that, of course, is the reason tech writers' inboxes are so full. Especially for the smaller companies, getting some free, positive coverage can help build some momentum.
October was a sweet month for Fort Lauderdale-based Citrix Systems, the largest South Florida-based technology company.
In fact, the company's financial position will likely enable it to buy other companies or technologies.
On Oct. 20, the maker of access infrastructure software released news that made it the day's darling on Wall Street. Third-quarter earnings were 24 cents a share, well above analysts' consensus of 20 cents. That sent shares of Citrix up 11 percent the next day.
Citrix shares on the Nasdaq soared by nearly one-third in October, while the Nasdaq itself and the Dow Jones industrial average both fell. Since Sept. 1, Citrix is up by just under 50 percent.
The company, with just fewer than 2,500 employees, has weathered the volatile ups and downs of the tech sector the last five years and has struggled with its identity. But now it seems to have found its niche -- everything that has to do with access. In other words, Citrix wants to allow business executives to access anything from expense reports to company spreadsheets using a remote laptop or personal digital assistant.
Chief Financial Officer David Henshall says that with $62 million in cash flow from operations last quarter, the company is in a position to grow by acquisition.
"I don't see anything dramatic on the horizon, but we might [consider] smaller acquisitions where you're really buying specific technologies or development teams," he said.
Growth has been particularly strong in Citrix Online, a Web-based desktop access developer that had been Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Expertcity Inc. until Citrix bought it in February and renamed it. Citrix Online revenues will grow about 75 percent this year and an additional 50 percent in 2005, Henshall said.
The South Florida CIO Council will hold a seminar Thursday called "Justifying the Cost of IT" in Boca Raton. A similar session will be held in Miami. For more information, contact the council at SouthFlorida@ciocouncil.org or call 813-888-5555.
Ian Katz can be reached at ikatz@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4664.
Source: Sun-Sentinel
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