Technology Reseller - v12 2018

01732 759725 COMMUNICATIONS 26 Doing it for themselves hub for Wildix developers in other parts of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and Estonia. The R&D centre is fundamental to the continued development of Wildix’s product portfolio, which consists of two elements: a VoIP PBX (available in hosted, virtualised and on-premise versions), which provides telephony and collaboration services, including chat, video calls, screen- sharing and file transfer; and a range of micro-services, like the Kite web chat, screensharing and collaboration feature, Ubicom videoconferencing, automatic speech recognition and speech to text conversion. Unlike companies that choose to develop their offering through the acquisition of new technologies, Wildix prefers to create its own solutions – and has done so from the very start. “In 2005, none of the networking vendors were doing anything new and while we saw a lot of solutions based on open source software, they were home- made and didn’t offer any guarantees to partners. That’s when we recognised the huge potential in the market,” explained Osler. The potential was there, but the technology wasn’t, so the brothers had to develop what they needed themselves. “They were really hard times,” said Osler. “In the beginning the components we had to work with weren’t that good, so we had to write a lot of code to make everything work as we wanted it to.” The commitment to innovation and self-sufficiency instilled in those early days continues to define Wildix’s approach today, which is to maintain an ongoing process of product development and enhancement. The R&D centre releases beta versions of new features to partners as often as once or twice a week, gathering feedback before delivering stable releases to end user customers every two to three months. “The main advantage we offer over competitors is full integration of our products. We do everything in-house and we plan on acquiring teams that are efficient at creating good software. We don’t want to acquire ready solutions and somehow combine them with our offering. We believe in an eco-system of products that work together as one,” explained Osler. WebRTC pioneer This approach has enabled the company to stay at the forefront of developments in conferencing and communications, particularly in relation to WebRTC (web real time communications), the power at the heart of the Wildix PBX and a major attraction for businesses with mobile and flexible working practices and a desire to improve productivity and agility through easy, effective conferencing. WebRTC has a number of core benefits for end users: n It is integrated into web browsers (with the exception of Microsoft Edge), so users can access the full Wildix phone system simply by opening a browser and logging on, with no need to install software or plug-ins. This gives users the ability to take their phone system with them wherever they go – all they need is a browser or the Wildix smartphone app. With the option of a hosted version of the Wildix PBX, they don’t even need on-site hardware or handsets but can run everything through WebRTC. Wildix has clients with 300 or 400 users who choose to operate in this way; and n It is secure by design, with encryption of both signalling exchanges (connections) and media exchanges (voice and video). Wildix is a WebRTC pioneer. It started developing the technology in 2012, when it was first implemented in browsers and has been active in improving WebRTC with Google and encouraging wider take-up, for Wildix, featured in Technology Reseller Issue 10, may be relatively unknown to UK resellers, but it is well established in several European countries, notably Italy, France and the Netherlands, and, following the opening of sales offices in the UK and US, is on target to achieve a turnover of $19 million this year, up from $14 million in 2017. To find out more about the fast growing developer of browser-based Unified Communications solutions and VoIP products, Technology Reseller visited Wildix’s R&D centre in Odessa, Ukraine, where co-founder and CTO Dimitri Osler and VoIP engineer Vasiliy Ganchev explained why Wildix is a leader in WebRTC. Research and development lies at the heart of the Wildix success story, from its beginnings in Italy in 2005 and the development of its first PBX to the present day, when it continues to break new ground in the application of WebRTC technology, which gives users the ability to screen- share, make video calls, share files, chat and make voice calls via a web browser or mobile application. In 2005, with cash generated from sales of SIP phones, Wildix founders Dimitri Osler and his brother Steve set up an R&D centre in Odessa to develop a VoIP PBX. Now spread over two floors in a modern office block in central Odessa, the facility employs 80 people and acts as a Unlike companies that choose to develop their offering through the acquisition of new technologies, Wildix prefers to create its own solutions – and has done so from the very start. Technology Reseller visited Wildix’s R&D centre in the Ukraine to find out more about the company’s plans for its VoIP PBX and associated services