Alex Doyle Joins Vidtel

Recently Alex Doyle took on the role of VP of Marketing at Vidtel. If you are not familiar with Vidtel, it offers a variety of cloud-based video conferencing services including meet-me conferencing bridge services and an any-to-any service that traverses video through most firewalls. For its unique and innovative contributions, the firm was featured last year in the Enterprise Connect Innovation Showcase.  

If you are not familiar with Alex Doyle, he’s been around hosted services for awhile. He was part of the founding team at BroadSoft and helped develop BroadSoft’s field sales efforts and most recently rejuvenated Polycom’s service provider business. Vidtel intends to leverage Alex’s go-to-market experience by helping partners sell Vidtel services. He intends to bring his experience of developing channels and selling cloud to the emerging video-as-a-service market.

Alex will remain based in the Washington, D.C. area. He’s the proud father of three which has fostered his side career of coaching youth sports. Off the field, he’s been spotted in crossword solving contests.

DM: Alex, this move was surprising to me, why a startup? Why Vidtel?

AD: Vidtel isn’t exactly a startup. What’s really exciting for me is that the service is live, there’s a substantial customer base, and the customer base is growing at a double-digit percentage monthly. Because video has historically been something that’s been used by such a small sub-segment of the market, there’s all kinds of room for continued growth.

It’s no secret that the video collaboration industry is going through massive disruption as this technology shifts from premises-based to cloud-based, and it’s great to join a company that is not just an industry leader, but also one that literally helped create this space. I’m also excited about being part of such a great team. I’ve worked with both CEO Scott Wharton and CTO Daniel Goepp over the years, and they’re superstars. What they’ve built in a short period of time is really amazing.

DM: Cisco and Polycom have seen a recent downturn in video equipment sales, does that mean video peaked?

AD: No, not at all. What we’re really seeing, I think, is one market closing, and another beginning. If you think about it, the traditional premises vendors have competed for the largest of the large enterprises, with really expensive, highly complex immersive telepresence solutions. When you see reports of “downturns” in the video market, what you’re really seeing is a slowing down of that specific market segment. You can make the argument that that segment is approaching saturation.

But – there’s another massive new market opening – the vast midmarket. Historically, these companies were virtually prohibited from leveraging video conferencing because of the cost and complexity of these solutions. But if you think about it, this is the perfect customer for cloud video – this “underserved and overburdened” midmarket.

Saying video has “peaked” – that would be like saying “computing” peaked when IBM mainframe sales started to decline and PC sales started to take off…I think the same dynamic is happening in the video space.

DM: What specifically do you think changed or will change that will stimulate more video conferencing?

AD: It’s a combination of product, technology, and demographics. On the product side, as video cameras were built into all manners of devices and tablets, that’s helped video become more mainstream. Likewise, on the technology side, this shift we’re all seeing towards WebRTC is making video more accessible and stimulating video growth. Finally, we’re in the middle of some real demographic shifts – businesses are more flexible, more virtual, and more nimble when it comes to hiring and M&A. They’re able to hire the best person for the job, rather than the best available local person.

DM: Doesn’t it make more sense to own an MCU? Why use a service with incremental usage costs?

AD: Actually, customers share with us that the TCO for cloud services is less than 10 percent of the costs of a premises system or owning your own MCU. These MCUs are quite expensive – and managing MCUs is extremely complex and extremely expensive. When you consider that the companies that utilize video conferencing are usually multi-site, these operational and management costs are significant.

But the other thing our customers tell us that their main concern is their strategic imperative. Simply put, they want to focus on their core business, not on running an MCU. They think – and I agree – that they are not going to be a better law firm, hospital, architecture firm, or what have you, by managing their MCU better than the competitor down the street. They want to focus their resources on areas where they have a competitive advantage – and get their video conferencing capability from a trusted partner.

DM: You’ve worked on sales support and go-to-market on the cloud voice side previously. Is there a parallel between Cloud Voice and Cloud Video?

AD: I think we’re seeing the same inflection point with cloud video that we saw with cloud voice – except that while it took 10 years for cloud voice to develop, cloud video is happening much, much faster. That’s partly because technology has improved, and partly because customers are much more comfortable with cloud today – but it’s also because the drivers for cloud video are so much more compelling than they are for cloud voice. Video is a complex technology, and no one wants to be burdened with expensive, siloed equipment that is hard to manage – when you look at the economic, technology, and demographic benefits of cloud video, it’s kind of a no-brainer to look to cloud providers to deliver this. You just aren’t seeing the “premises vs. hosted” debates we saw in the Hosted PBX years.

DM: Vidtel doesn’t sell direct, but relies on various channel partners. First, why channel? And secondly what do you look for in a partner?

AD: It’s really the smartest go-to-market strategy for us. There’s a large community of video resellers and video integrators who know this market, have the trust of the customer base, and have the skillset to sell and deliver service. What they’ve been missing is a real cloud service to complete their portfolio – and that’s what Vidtel delivers to them.

We’re looking for partners who are experienced and passionate about delivering cloud video, and have the skillset to sell and deliver video services. Most of the channel partners that work with us already have an installed base. The video players who have been reselling premises-based solutions – they’re on the front lines, so they see the current market disruption better than anyone, so they’re quite often coming to us to fill a hole in their portfolio.

DM: As a VP of Marketing, who is your target? Partners or end users?

AD: I’ve got to look at both. To be clear, Vidtel’s only Go-To-Market is our channels: we only sell through our partners, and we’re 100 percent committed to our partners. We’ve seen other companies try to sell both direct and indirect and end up undercutting or competing with their partners. Vidtel, on the other hand, is 100 percent channel oriented. But that said, one of my primary responsibilities at Vidtel is making these partners successful – so that means we need to arm our partners with the sales tools, marketing materials, and best practices to help them succeed in the market. So in order to be successful, I’ll be working both with partners and monitoring the end user community closely.

DM: Vidtel is positioning itself as “any-to-any” service including SIP, H.323, WebRTC, Google Talk, and Skype. How can Vidtel do that?

AD: One of our key value propositions is any-to-any video conferencing. Again, I think this reflects one of the key seismic shifts in the industry: when the only buyers for video were the largest of large enterprises, it was ok to settle on an all-Cisco or all-Polycom solution, because these companies only had large video rooms, and they could afford to invest in powerful IT teams to support these rooms.

But with this shift towards the broader mid-market – with this democratization of technology – what we have is a need for this any-to-any conferencing. Companies may have home workers who need to call in via WebRTC clients; they may have business partners or suppliers who call in from Google Talk or Skype. As the language of video conferencing becomes less “room-centric” and more “user-centric,” this any-to-any capability really is a core requirement.

And how does Vidtel do it? It’s a credit to Daniel Goepp, Vidtel’s CTO, and the great team has assembled. Daniel’s built carrier-grade networks for service providers in previous companies, and carrier-grade service and open interoperability is part of his DNA. We have developed all of our own technology, so we’re not held back by any limitations of third-party software. They’ve really separated Vidtel from the pack when it comes to delivering carrier-grade service.

DM: Do you think WebRTC will significantly impact the video space?

AD: I do. Vidtel’s been a leader in WebRTC video, which I’m really excited about. This is really going to be another disruption in our space, and Vidtel’s been a leader here too – in fact, Vidtel’s won the “best conferencing app” award at the recent WebRTC Expo show in San Francisco.

With WebRTC, I think we’ll see another leap forward with video collaboration – when connecting to a bridge is as simple as powering up your browser, that makes this technology and productivity available to a massive new segment of the market. It’s just a really exciting time.

DM: Thanks Alex, and good luck in the new role.

AD: Thanks very much, Dave.