2013 North American Hosted IP Telephony and UC Services Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award

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1 2013 North American Hosted IP Telephony and UC Services Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award 2013

2 Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award Hosted IP Telephony and UC Services North America, 2013 Frost & Sullivan s Global Research Platform Frost & Sullivan is in its 50th year in business with a global research organization of 1,800 analysts and consultants who monitor more than 300 industries and 250,000 companies. The company s research philosophy originates with the CEO s 360-Degree Perspective, which serves as the foundation of its TEAM Research methodology. This unique approach enables us to determine how best-in-class companies worldwide manage growth, innovation and leadership. Based on the findings of this Best Practices research, Frost & Sullivan is proud to present the 2013 North American Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award in Hosted IP Telephony and UC Services to SimpleSignal. Significance of the Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award Key Industry Challenges Addressed by Entrepreneurial Leadership The North American hosted IP telephony and unified communications (UC) services market is growing rapidly at about 30 percent annually. A growing number of businesses are looking to outsource their communications and collaboration capabilities from a trusted service provider in order to avoid the large capital expenditures and risk associated with deploying communications infrastructure on the customer premises. Compared to premises-based deployment, cloud solutions also allow more economical and flexible capacity adjustments at times of rapid growth or downsizing. Furthermore, cloud solutions provide faster access to advanced features and functionality and a broader pool of technology expertise at a reduced risk. However, competition in the nascent hosted IP telephony and UC market is rapidly intensifying. Both technology and business models are constantly evolving factors that are challenging service providers to continually innovate and adapt to changing market conditions. The competitive landscape is also highly fragmented. Over 60 providers are delivering a variety of hosted UC solutions, making it difficult for customers to identify the solutions and providers that best fit their needs. A company that demonstrates entrepreneurial leadership is well positioned to compete. Entrepreneurial leadership attests to a company s innovative features and functionality, reliable service delivery, and greater attention to customer needs. New customers are typically attracted to a broad feature set; however, customer satisfaction and retention are largely dependent on service reliability and availability, and the quality of customer service. An entrepreneurial company boosts growth rates through constant innovation and reduces churn through unwavering attention to evolving customer needs Frost & Sullivan 1 We Accelerate Growth

3 Impact of Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award on Key Stakeholders The Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award is a prestigious recognition of SimpleSignal s accomplishments in the hosted IP telephony and UC services market. An unbiased, third-party recognition can provide a profound impact in enhancing the brand value and accelerating SimpleSignal s growth. As captured in Chart 1 below, by researching, ranking, and recognizing those who deliver excellence and best practices in their respective endeavors, Frost & Sullivan hopes to inspire, influence, and impact three specific constituencies: Investors Investors and shareholders always welcome unbiased and impartial third-party recognition. Similarly, prospective investors and shareholders are drawn to companies with a well-established reputation for excellence. Unbiased validation is the best and most credible way to showcase an organization worthy of investment. Customers Third-party industry recognition has been proven to be the most effective way to assure customers that they are partnering with an organization that is leading in its field. Employees This Award represents the creativity and dedication of SimpleSignal s executive team and employees. Such public recognition can boost morale and inspire your team to continue its best-in-class pursuit of a strong competitive position for SimpleSignal. Chart 1: Best Practices Leverage for Growth Acceleration 2013 Frost & Sullivan 2 We Accelerate Growth

4 Key Benchmarking Criteria for Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award For the Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award, the following criteria were used to benchmark SimpleSignal s performance against key competitors: Growth Strategy Excellence Growth Implementation Excellence Degree of Innovation with Products and Technologies Leadership in Customer Value Speed of Response to Market Needs Decision Support Matrix and Measurement Criteria To support its evaluation of best practices across multiple business performance categories, Frost & Sullivan employs a customized Decision Support Matrix (DSM). The DSM is an analytical tool that compares companies performance relative to each other with an integration of quantitative and qualitative metrics. The DSM features criteria unique to each Award category and ranks importance by assigning weights to each criterion. The relative weighting reflects current market conditions and illustrates the associated importance of each criterion according to Frost & Sullivan. Fundamentally, each DSM is distinct for each market and Award category. The DSM allows our research and consulting teams to objectively analyze each company's performance on each criterion relative to its top competitors and assign performance ratings on that basis. The DSM follows a 10-point scale that allows for nuances in performance evaluation; ratings guidelines are shown in Chart 2. Chart 2: Performance-Based Ratings for Decision Support Matrix This exercise encompasses all criteria, leading to a weighted average ranking of each company. Researchers can then easily identify the company with the highest ranking. As a final step, the research team confirms the veracity of the model by ensuring that small changes to the ratings for a specific criterion do not lead to a significant change in the overall relative rankings of the companies Frost & Sullivan 3 We Accelerate Growth

5 Chart 3: Frost & Sullivan s 10-Step Process for Identifying Award Recipients Best Practice Award Analysis for SimpleSignal The Decision Support Matrix, shown in Chart 4, illustrates the relative importance of each criterion for the Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award and the ratings for each company under evaluation. To remain unbiased while also protecting the interests of the other organizations reviewed, we have chosen to refer to the other key players as Competitor 1 and Competitor 2. Chart 4: Decision Support Matrix for Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award Measurement of 1 10 (1 = lowest; 10 = highest) Award Criteria Growth Strategy Excellence Growth Implementation Excellence Degree of Innovation with Products and Technologies Leadership in Customer Value Speed of Response to Market Needs Weighted Rating Relative Weight (%) 20% 20% 20% 20% 20% 100% SimpleSignal Competitor Competitor Frost & Sullivan 4 We Accelerate Growth

6 Criterion 1: Growth Strategy Excellence SimpleSignal is dedicated to delivering affordable, reliable, and feature-rich cloud communications solutions to small and medium-size businesses (SMB). It has built its network using proven BroadSoft and Polycom infrastructure, and has leveraged internal engineering expertise to develop additional applications and integrations with other cloud and premises-based solutions. Its commitment to service excellence goes beyond features and functionality: it extends to service reliability and availability, which represent major concerns in the cloud industry but can be addressed through superior data center and network design. Finally, SimpleSignal acknowledges customers need for personalized service and support and makes those focal points of its business practices. Criterion 2: Growth Implementation Excellence With more than 50,000 installed seats at the end of 2012, Simple Signal earned a spot among the top 20 hosted IP telephony providers in North America. It reported over 30 percent growth rate in 2012, a tough year for many telecommunications vendors, but one of the strongest years in SimpleSignal s history. It is also off to a strong start in 2013, registering close to 20 percent growth in installed seats in just the first quarter. SimpleSignal s innovative and continually expanding features and capabilities, flexible integrations with third-party applications, strong focus on service quality, and a channelcentric approach are some of the factors driving the company s success. Importantly, SimpleSignal stands out among the crowd of providers which approach the SMB market with a low touch model in terms of post-sale customer support. Nimble and customer-oriented, SimpleSignal is well positioned for continued growth through enhanced customer value and superior customer service and support. Criterion 3: Degree of Innovation with Products and Technologies SimpleSignal offers a broad set of applications and services, including: private branch exchange (PBX); conferencing; messaging; presence; mobility; call recording; and more. It is one of few hosted UC providers to deploy its own video infrastructure in order to deliver cost-effective video services to SMB customers. It delivers video to ipads, laptops, as well as interoperability with Cisco and LifeSize equipment. At a compelling price of $30 per seat per month, SimpleSignal makes video accessible to even the most cost conscious organizations. Furthermore, SimpleSignal offers greater value to its customers through open APIs and flexible integrations with other cloud and premises-based applications such as Salesforce.com, ACT!, and Microsoft Outlook. It also offers hosted Microsoft OCS, website call-back buttons, voice-to-text messaging, and more. gunify is a cloud-based system that facilitates integration SimpleSignal PBX service with GoogleApps and thus enables SimpleSignal customers to manage their calls, conferences, and presence from within Google applications. SimpleSignal also offers Unity Desktop for call control and a Reception 2013 Frost & Sullivan 5 We Accelerate Growth

7 Console for more efficient call management. Finally, SimpleSignal provides several options for Lync integration including basic SIP trunking, SIP trunking with hosted PBX features, and a fully managed hosted Lync integrated with SimpleSignal s hosted PBX. Criterion 4: Leadership in Customer Value Customer testimonials show that businesses greatly appreciate SimpleSignal s advanced feature set and ease of use, as well as its staff s close attention to customer needs. For many businesses, a competitively priced bundle of PBX functionality, audio, web, and video conferencing, voic and fax to , soft clients, mobility, and more represents a flexible, convenient, and cost-effective alternative to premises-based solutions offering the same capabilities. Furthermore, customers praise the simplicity of the system, which allows even the most inexperienced users to just plug and play. Even more important, customers testify to the reliability of the system. Many cloud solutions experience challenges either due to inappropriate data center setup or inadequate network design. SimpleSignal strives to avoid those challenges through geographically redundant data centers, based in California and Colorado, which are designed for automatic failover and constant monitoring of edge router performance. SimpleSignal runs its service over an MPLS network for guaranteed QoS, but also gives customers the option of bringing their own bandwidth which enables them to deploy SimpleSignal s hosted PBX service over existing or preferred broadband access networks. SimpleSignal demonstrates full accountability by sharing its daily network performance statistics on its website. It reported high availability in the past year. However, the company is not resting on its laurels, but instead publicly committed to continually improve performance going forward. Unlike many of its competitors, SimpleSignal takes full responsibility for any issues affecting its service regardless of the root cause. Finally, customers truly appreciate SimpleSignal s hands-on approach during implementation and throughout the life of the service. SimpleSignal hand holds its customers through initial tests and trials, installation, training, and ongoing support. Customers praise its staff for responsiveness and attentiveness to their specific needs. SimpleSignal s churn rate of less than 1 percent is proof of its high customer satisfaction. Criterion 5: Speed of Response to Market Needs SimpleSignal is quick to respond to evolving market needs. In 2004, it was one of the early entrants in the hosted IP telephony market and has since then evolved its portfolio to address growing demand for UC, mobility, video, presence, and custom integrations. It continues to improve every aspect of its business to provide even greater value to its customers Frost & Sullivan 6 We Accelerate Growth

8 Conclusion SimpleSignal s high growth and customer retention rates provide strong validation of its growth strategy, successful execution, superior technology, customer value, and ability to address evolving market needs. Frost & Sullivan is proud to present SimpleSignal with its 2013 Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award in the North American hosted IP telephony and UC services market. Critical Importance of TEAM Research Frost & Sullivan s TEAM Research methodology represents the analytical rigor of our research process. It offers a 360-degree view of industry challenges, trends, and issues by integrating all seven of Frost & Sullivan's research methodologies. Our experience has shown over the years that companies too often make important growth decisions based on a narrow understanding of their environment, leading to errors of both omission and commission. Frost & Sullivan contends that successful growth strategies are founded on a thorough understanding of market, technical, economic, financial, customer, best practices, and demographic analyses. In that vein, the letters T, E, A and M reflect our core technical, economic, applied (financial and best practices) and market analyses. The integration of these research disciplines into the TEAM Research methodology provides an evaluation platform for benchmarking industry players and for creating high-potential growth strategies for our clients. Chart 5: Benchmarking Performance with TEAM Research 2013 Frost & Sullivan 7 We Accelerate Growth

9 About Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth and achieve best-in-class positions in growth, innovation and leadership. The company's Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEO's Growth Team with disciplined research and best-practice models to drive the generation, evaluation and implementation of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan leverages 50 years of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses and the investment community from more than 40 offices on six continents. To join our Growth Partnership, please visit Frost & Sullivan 8 We Accelerate Growth