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Tuesday, December 14, 2010
The Pitch
IT startup eZuce targets open source communication
By Lynette F. Cornell
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eZuce Inc.
Headquarters: Newburyport
Phone: 978-296-1005
Email: martin@ezuce.com
URL: www.ezuce.com
Founded: 2010
Employees: 22
In the company’s own words:
“EZuce is a unified communications (UC) software and services company that enables mid-to-large enterprises to seamlessly transition legacy PBX systems to second generation, fully integrated, web-enabled communications. Our goal is to provide a software-only IT application that runs on standard off-the-shelf hardware and operating systems.”
About the technology:
EZuce has developed open source software-based unified communications products and services designed to allow companies to bypass the costs of upgrading their private branch exchange (PBX) to an IP PBX by managing all communication using software. Its Communication as a Service (CaaS) product OpenUC unites all forms of digital communication, including voice, video, instant messaging, presence, conferencing, collaboration, unified messaging, call center and mobility. With its software-only model, its communication tools are available as premise-based using existing hardware or they can be hosted and moved into the cloud via managed service providers.
People behind the company:
Martin Steinmann, CEO and co-founder, also serves as the president and chair of SIPfoundry Inc., a Massachusetts-based non-profit focused on open source communication tools. His startup experience includes working as the senior vice president of marketing for Pingtel Corp., where eZuce COO and co-founder, Jerry Stabile, formerly served as senior vice president of Sales and Service Operations. eZuce’s lead architect Douglas Hubler also worked at Pingtel, serving in the role of software engineer. David Grazio, vice president of product marketing, served as the director of channel marketing at Bluesocket Inc., the wireless communication company that acquired Pingtel. Michael Picher is eZuce’s director of technical services.
Background:
EZuce raised a seed round of $1 million in May and plans to close a $4 million Series A round of financing in the first quarter of 2011. The company is not currently profitable but expects to achieve profitability in the second half of 2011.
The pitch:
The company is seeking business partnerships with VoIP and UC solution resellers that can also provide services to customers paired with the openUC software.
The market:
EZuce’s target market includes mid- to large-sized companies with 200 to 10,000 users within distributed environments, serving multiple branches with a growing mobile workforce. Its primary audience includes IT professionals that are looking to manage IT applications that are open, scalable and interoperable. The unified communications market the company is pursuing is worth over $20 billion, according to Grazio. The company is also planning to establish itself as a dominant player in the higher education sector.
The competition:
In the enterprise market, eZuce’s primary competitors are Avaya Inc., Nortel Networks, Cisco Systems Inc., Microsoft Corp. and IBM Corp., said Grazio. The major advantage that eZuce provides is its control of SIPfoundry, which has a brand in the market that is credible and generates leads and a code base of 3.3 million lines of code, said Grazio. According to Grazio, eZuce is the only company other than Microsoft offering a UC solution that is entirely software-based.
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