eZuce – UC Moves Deeper into the Cloud

Last week saw the launch of yet another UC offering, and with that, the underlying value proposition continues to shift. This one caught my eye for a few reasons, and I’ll touch on those here. Let’s start with the name – my consulting focus is mostly about marketing and strategy, so this plays to what’s closest to home for me.

The company is called eZuce – and if you’re not sure how to pronounce it – or even spell it – you’re not alone. Without even knowing what they do, the company has your attention already – nothing wrong with that. Am sure with a bit of noodling, you’ll figure out the name, and then you’ll know why I’m writing about the company here for the UCS portal. If you pronounce the name straight-up – e-Zeuss – this could be an online portal about Greek mythology (which I’d love – do they teach stuff like this any more in school? I digress.).

Work over the name a bit more, and the storyline emerges – EZ UC. It takes a bit of effort make this connection and it’s too early to tell if this will help or hinder their success. I’m a big fan of subtle messaging in marketing, and this reminds me a lot of the Camry. This model was a huge winner for Toyota, and while it was a great car, I have no doubt that this clever name was a factor in its success. Again, if you jumble up the name, you’ll see that “Camry” is an anagram for a very powerful value proposition that has deep meaning for car owners – “my car.” I have yet to come across anyone else making this connection, but it’s as clear as day to me. This is a bit like that “whoa” moment in The Shining, when the mirror reveals that the mystery word “redrum” is “murder” spelled backwards.

I know I’m mixing genres here, but that’s how I’m wired, and I make no apologies in drawing from realms outside of technology. There’s method to my logic, however, and I’m coming around to eZuce. Just like “my car” resonates with the dreams of consumers who want a quality, reliable vehicle at a fair price, EZ UC resonates big time in our market. While the virtues of UC are self-evident to readers of this portal, we all know that UC has been a tough sell for a variety of reasons. Ease of use is definitely one of them, and kudos to eZuce for naming the company after this core value driver. So long as UC remains a challenge to implement and use, the name should work to their advantage.

Let’s move on from Marketing 101 and get to the big question – can they deliver on the brand promise? New solutions come to market all the time, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find one with a richer pedigree. On paper, eZuce is a startup, but the roots suggest otherwise. Starting with the founders, Dr. Martin Steinmann and Jerry Stabile, they were also the founders of SIPfoundry. This gives them a depth of expertise in the most important protocol for UC which nobody else in this space has.

Not only that, but SIPfoundry reaches a large and important community of developers, which is a critical competence for any UC platform to help its customers differentiate and customize. Aside from SIP, there is the open source aspect of SIPfoundry, which is a key factor is keeping costs low and making UC more attractive economically to businesses. I should also note that there is VC past here, and anyone leaving that world for a startup must really believe in what they’re doing.

Building on this is an important history with Nortel going back to 2007 on an OEM basis, and leading up to acquisition and commercialization by them in 2009. As such, the founders have proven their technology is Tier 1-worthy and they have had success with channels globally, not just with Nortel, but Dell and IBM as well. They have deployments running now with some universities, along with 10,000 users at Amazon.com.

eZuce is very much targeted at the enterprise market, which they believe is ready to embrace hosted UC, especially with their particular value proposition. Being totally software-based, they have a CaaS solution that they believe is scalable and capable enough to rival any UC solution. This means eZuce can be either a fully hosted service, or one that integrates with a premise-based IP PBX. Their view is that all this underlying pedigree enables them to offer a software-based solution that is as enterprise-worthy as anything else out there. Whether this translates into the ease-of-use I’ve been talking about remains to be seen, but it certainly looks like they’ve pulled all the key pieces together in a way that enterprises will be drawn to.

The real kicker, though, is the pricing advantage their model brings. By definition, CaaS should have some strong cost advantages, and even more so when open source is factored in. eZuce claims they can deliver UC at the “price of email,” but I really don’t know what to make of this. When it comes to pricing, TCO, ROI, etc., email is code for free, so any references like this are bound to get your attention.

We all know how the likes of Skype can offer telephony for free or near-free, but UC has many more moving parts. eZuce talks about how they can be the open source alternative to Microsoft, and in that regard, this is starting to sound like Google Wave. Google can offer all this for free since they really don’t need to monetize it, but this is eZuce’s only business. Just because you can offer UC for the price of email doesn’t mean you should. I just think that sets the price bar so low, and you can only make real money there with a large base of customers. That’s going to be tough for any startup to achieve, even with their background.

While I like the company, their branding and aggressive approach to crack the enterprise market, I’m concerned the market will be confused by the low pricing/high performance value proposition. Low pricing can be a great strategy to enter a market, but it’s tough to build on that, especially if there’s no early traction. eZuce has the potential to be disruptive in this space, and that could be a good thing, especially for getting enterprises to adopt UC. However, I think it will take a few leaps of faith, but if the payoff is there – literally – eZuce could have a Skype-like impact on UC, and that sure would be interesting. Just remember where you heard about this first, and I’ll be re-visiting eZuce later this year to see if the market is buying what they’re selling.