- Hi everyone, and thank you for
tuning into another episode of SIP Chats.
I'm Brian Jairek, your host.
I've been with Voip supply about 14 years now,
as a Voip specialist.
And today alongside us,
we do have Paul Tuttle from CyberData.
How's it going, Paul?
- Very good, Brian, thanks for having me.
- Absolutely.
Thanks for taking the time
out to have a little chat with us.
Paul, do you want to introduce yourself and tell us a bit
about what you do with CybeData and
let's hear about CyberData as well?
- Absolutely, absolutely.
So of course, I'm Paul Tuttle
and I'm the interoperability manager for CyberData.
Cyber data corporation is an IP end point manufacturer.
We started in the seventies, of course not in Voip
way back then, we were doing POS stuff,
but we kind of evolve as the market did.
And we got into Voip and we're kind of seen
as the IP end point solution company.
Whereas we've provided anything from say door phones
and secure access control devices to paging speakers
for overhead announcements, to interfaces
to analog paging systems, to facilitate the use
of old school analog systems that, you know
somebody spent a whole bunch of money on,
that still wants to utilize all that infrastructure.
So we really dabble, dabble in a lot at CyberData.
And in my position
what I do as an interoperability manager
it's kind of a buzzword term, but basically
what I do is I test our products on different platforms,
and make sure that everything works correctly.
If it doesn't, I either work
with the provider of that particular platform to
fix any problems that they have on their end.
That's pretty rare.
Usually I end up helping our team fix any
say networking problems
or any SIP related communication problems to
get everything working smoothly and expected
when products go into that particular platform.
And then after we get all the testing done, you know
we'll do our formal release, and everything and put
out all their marketing stuff, but then comes documentation
and actually setting up the products.
Cause it's all well and good to say, "Oh, our products
are tested and they work on this platform, but I don't
have any documentation to show you how to do that."
So, the whole second step of it is setting
up all that documentation and writing all of those basically
documents to walk through the setup process and
in a really easy, straightforward way.
You know, we all had trouble setting up the time
on our VCR back in the day.
So I want to try to avoid that with our documentation and
make, you know, setting up SIP endpoints
as easy as possible.
- Absolutely. Yeah, that's super important.
And you know, obviously we've been through a lot
through this past year and, workplaces have changed
drastically and a lot of the equipment needed to
operate today under today's, I guess, confines
if you will, requires different equipment and you know?
We're using Zoom now, MS Teams is huge,
and Voip in general is really a term
that everyone's now familiar with.
Can you talk a little bit
of how you're seeing CyberData's products being integrated
with the current workplace environments?
- Absolutely, absolutely.
You know, we've always done a lot
in the hosted environment, especially before, you know
the current situation, you know
the hosted providers were always, you know
a big mover for us, but really after the current pandemic
and everything that we're dealing with,
things have just really changed when we've seen, you know
like you said, a really big boost in Zoom and MS Teams.
Zoom was one that we had always kept
our eye on because, behind the scenes,
they were the ones that were providing
say the actual web conference capability
for a lot of other providers.
That was basically all Zoom was doing for a long time
just the, the video conferencing, you know, they did it
for RingCentral was one of their big ones that they pushed.
You know, it was meetings with RingCentral powered by Zoom
and they kind of came out with a phone system
and we started working with them, you know, we had our eye
on them for awhile and they reached out to us.
It was kind of a mutual thing where we knew
that they were going to launch a phone system offering.
They knew that they were going to launch that
and they wanted a paging partner
and they knew us out there in the industry,
so it was kind of a mutual reach out together.
And we started working together
and we've seen a really big increase
in inquiries for Zoom customers.
Zoom has been really, really popular.
I think that, you know
they've kind of got that Google effect now where, you know
especially when people in their personal lives
you know, and having, you know,
a meeting with grandma, they're having a Zoom meeting
everybody's doing the Zoom stuff
and you have a Zoom meeting instead
of just like a web conference or, you know
a Skype call or something.
You have a Zoom meeting
and they've kind of got that Google effect where
people just synonymized a web meeting as Zoom.
And I really think the Zoom is going to be a really
big player going forward.
And the same thing with MS teams, you know
I see Zoom as a little bit more
of the small to medium business.
They hit some enterprise level customers.
Cause I still deal with a lot
of universities that are doing that now,
because they bundle so much together.
But I see Teams as kind of the enterprise counterpart
to the small to medium business
for Zoom and teams has been really, really useful.
We use it at CyberData.
And one of the pain points that you can get
into with Teams is because it's in a Microsoft system
you need some kind of an intermediary device
or service to be able to communicate
with Teams because it can be very tough to get
in and play in that Microsoft environment.
So that's where we've started working
with a couple different companies.
Vodia is a big one that we've been working
with for a hosted solution in terms
of integrating and providing direct routing
with Teams and Rivet is another really great example.
- Awesome, awesome.
Now, are you guys seeing more,
I guess with the current environment
are you seeing more actual paging speakers,
or is it more door access solutions,
or intercoms or really a mix of everything?
- Yeah, it's really a mix of everything.
You know, when the whole situation occurred and you know
people aren't going into the office,
kids aren't going to school.
I imagine we're going to see a pretty big drop-off
in paging speakers and paging equipment.
Cause nobody's going to be around to hear those pages.
Why would you need to go out
go and shell out all this money to buy, you know
paging speakers that nobody's going to use it?
We still seen a pretty dramatic increase in those
but I really think intercoms has been one
of the big things that we've seen a lot of traffic in
just because people are trying to isolate a little bit more
and those that still do go into the office.
They keep the system locked up.
There's not that many people on the location.
And you know, if say a UPS guy comes over
and knocks on the door, they might not want to
like physically interact with the UPS guy.
Cause who knows how many people he's talked to, you know
they could potentially be contaminated with, with, you know
COVID so you try that.
Typically people are, are moving more towards intercom
for communication with, you know, exterior people.
And the nice thing with our intercoms is
they've got an onboard relay to actually trigger the door.
So, you can unlock the door remotely
with just a simple DTMF code.
You know, the UPS guy can do a walk
up and press a button and say,
"Hey, I'm UPS and I got your package delivery."
"Okay, leave it there."
Or, you know, they can buzz them in
and have them leave it in the threshold of the doorway.
So we've definitely seen a
really big increase in Intercom sales.
That was one thing that, you know, we really saw,
especially when pairing with our flush mount kits,
especially in the medical industry.
That's another place that we've seen a big tick up there,
because in patient intake rooms,
they're trying to keep the nurses and the doctors, you know
segmented and keep them away from the potential patients.
So, we've seen a really big increase
in intercom sales for that industry and pairing them
with our flush mount kit because that pairs
with our outdoor intercom it's stainless steel
and then with our flush mount kit also stainless steel.
So it's really easy to clean
and sanitize after every potential interaction.
So we've seen a pretty big uptick in intercom sales,
but surprisingly paging systems are still fairly active.
I think it's because the schools aren't
in session right now and they, you know,
they haven't been in session for a while.
So, it's been a great time for installers
in schools that have been saying,
"Yeah we need to upgrade the phone system,
but it's not right."
You know, "We need to upgrade the paging system
but the time's not right."
Well, there's no better time when all the kids are stuck
at home, you know, doing remote classes to go through
and work on the paging system.
- Absolutely. May as well get it done now.
And you know, I can absolutely vouch as well
that we are seeing an uptick in paging speakers.
And especially with TalkBack like, you know
for the scenario here
Voip supply, you could be working from home
And on your cell phone, instead of calling someone
in the warehouse, you can still page the warehouse
from your cell phone, you know, regardless where you are
and have a TalkBack, a relationship,
with your warehouse just as if you were in the office.
So, I really think it enables the same efficiency
of really being onsite.
- Yeah. Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely. You know, that's one of
the things that I really like
about our products and that capability that it provides
and when you pair that with a hosted system, like you said
whether it's Teams, Zoom, or what have you, you know
it provides that capability to be able to interact
with the people onsite at location,
or wherever you want in the world.
Basically, as long as you've got an internet connection,
or a mobile data connection, you can still communicate
with them here and do live paging for them, no problem.
- Absolutely, absolutely.
Well, Paul, thank you so much for taking your time,
and sitting down, and having a SIP Chat with us.
Is there anything else you wanted to add,
about CyberData or maybe tell us something
about what you have going on, or what's upcoming?
- Absolutely, absolutely.
So, one of the big things that
we've had been had going on, and one
of the big things that I've been working
on personally is, I do internal training
at CyberData for our sales team.
And basically anybody that wants to sit in on it,
where once a week we have this thing, we call cyber school
and everybody gets together in the afternoon,
and listens to me, talk for a particular product,
about a particular product for about an hour or so.
And we started cutting up those videos and putting them
on our YouTube channel at YouTube.cyberdata.net,
So that way people can actually go
and interact with our YouTube channel
and actually watch these different seminars.
We've got them available.
We've got a pretty big catalog,
and that's one thing that I've been really working on.
The last one that we did was just about video intercoms
but it ranges from something specific for say, you know
our entire keypad, Intercom range,
talking about all the specifics,
and how they work, to overhead speakers
the application to use forum.
And then other kind of like features, say like,
auto-provisioning, we did a whole session where I talked
about auto-provisioning for an hour.
I swear people are getting tired about listening to me talk,
but they keep asking for me to keep
doing these sessions once a week so, we keep doing it.
We're putting it on YouTube for the masses.
- That's super cool and super useful too
especially for our customer base.
So be sure to check out Paul's cyber school
and we really appreciate everyone tuning in today.
And Paul, thank you so much
for taking the time out to sit with us.
- Absolutely, Thank you for the time Brian.
I look forward to chatting with you again.
- Sounds great.
All right, everyone.
Thanks for tuning in and,
we'll see you next time on SIP Chats