A Word on SightSpeed’s Upcoming SMB Product

Thursday, I had a chance to talk to Peter Csathy, SightSpeed’s CEO. The main reason I called him was to find out how much more traffic he was getting thanks to the Skype problems, but I also took the opportunity to ask him about the SMB product he recently mentioned in a video email update he mailed me.

The main reason they are attacking this space is because there is a huge hole between the Cisco CallManager-type installations–i.e. really huge and expensive systems–and the current consumer-focused SightSpeed application. Businesses that have more needs than the average consumer, but don’t have the money or the desire for the kind of overhead that a large Enterprise solution entails.

Their new SMB product will support a completely different user interface. Yes, this means a new application. It will support all of the following features:

• File Sharing
• Multipary calling enhancements
• Call Transfer/Hunt Groups
• Video Mail Enhancements
• Included Phone Out minutes
• Auditing
• An administrator console to control the above features

One other thing to note is the “Community” calling feature present in the current client will not be part of the SMB client.
Peter wasn’t ready to share the price of this package with the world just yet. However, he privately told me what the price point for this is. Trust me when I say it will be extremely affordable and that I am likely to be signing up for this service.

Unfortunately, the only date he was willing to share for availability for this product was “soon.” Which I can totally understand. It will be worth the wait, though.