CTI Squared's (CTI²) raised quite a bit of interest among major companies at the CTIA Wireless 2001 in Las Vegas last week. CTI² develops Unified Communications platform technology. Like other Openwave (Nasdaq: OPWV) business partners at the exhibition, CTI² presented its technology at its own booth, located within the Openwave exhibit.
CTI² announced two important cooperation agreements during CTIA Wireless 2001: One with Telcordia Technologies, which provides unified communications systems; and the other with computer giant Hewlett-Packard (Nasdaq: HWP).
Under the terms of the agreement with Telcordia, Telcordia will market CTI²’s W.W. Office, a unified communications solution, to its customers. Telecordia will also integrate W.W. Office with its own systems. Following the deal, CTI² set up a booth at Telcordia’s compound at the exhibition, providing CTI² with additional exposure.
Under the terms of the HP agreement, HP customers using HP-UX environments and NT servers will be able to use W.W. Office.
W.W. Office enables landline and cellular communications operators, as well as ISPs, ASPs, and other service providers, to offer IP-based value-added services, including unified messaging, instant messaging, presence management, and push/pull content delivery. The services can be transported across any network to any subscriber, using any device.
CTI² CEO Erez Marom said, “These cooperation agreements are important, because they enable our customers to compete in the unified communications services market.”
Marom and VP Marketing Boaz Gruener rushed from meeting to meeting with communications companies who came to CTIA Wireless to seek out hot new applications. As next generation technologies start to reach the market over the next few years, unified messaging is beginning to be thought of as one of the more important applications for cellular providers. The number of companies competing to supply these technologies is expected to mushroom in the years ahead.
Until recently, CTI²’s technology was integrated into Comverse (Nasdaq: CMVT)’s unified messaging product, and Comverse’s solution still uses CTI² technology. A few months ago, there were reports that Comverse and CTI² were negotiating the terms of a possible acquisition of CTI² by Comverse. No agreement was reached, and CTI² became an independent entity. Judging from Marom and Gruener’s sparkling eyes, the declaration of independence has been beneficial for them.
The messaging market in general, and the unified messaging market in particular, are considered today to be the killer applications that will save the cellular industry from declining subscriber revenue. Senior industry executives are worried by the dropping subscriber revenue that is rapidly pervading the industry. They know the sure and fast way to overcome the phenomenon and increase subscriber revenue is to introduce unified messaging boxes.
The market is at the starting gate and the competition is brutal. Although Comverse sells the highest number of unified boxes at the moment, the company’s competitors, headed by CTI², are biting at its heels. In other words, the market is still young, and the battle for supremacy is far from being decided.
One of the important steps taken by CTI² en route to independence was the cooperation agreement the company signed with Openwave in January. Openwave comes from the ISP world, and provides e-mail boxes, among other things. Openwave is considered to be one of Comverse’s strongest competitors in the unified messaging market. Both sides know a bitter war for the market still lies ahead. Comverse has a share of the cellular market thanks to the voice mailboxes that it supplies to the cellular providers, but Openwave has a portion of the e-mailboxes market. E-mail is forecast to become one of the vital applications for cellular telephony, and CTI² is already cooperating with several e-mail providers.
Published by Israel's Business Arena on 27 March 2001