Versature turned 10 years old today. Leading up to this day, we’ve published a couple of blog posts looking at the past and present of the company. Today we focus on the future.

10 years is kind of too old to be considered a startup, but maybe because of the pivots or maybe just because of the youthful culture at Versature, we honestly still consider ourselves a startup. Maybe it’s because we are David in the “David and Goliath” story going up against established players like Bell Canada, Telus, Rogers and Shaw. We need to be nimble, to innovate quickly, to try new things and not be afraid to make mistakes. I think that’s been one of the keys to our success so far.

So, what does the future hold for Versature? Dreaming big, we are looking into ways to provide our customers with data analytics tools so that they can slice-and-dice their phone traffic patterns and make informed business decisions around those metrics. Some people refer to this as “Big Data”, and it can be used to improve sales efficiency, increase support quality, and analyze call and voicemail patterns for relevant information to do with your business.

Another item on our roadmap is to identify those Cloud-based service providers with a complimentary offering that we might tie into, to improve our customer’s experience. Things like Cloud-based Email, File Storage, CRM, and other innovative services that we haven’t even considered yet. It’s fun to be part of the Canadian cloud ecosystem and encourage businesses to adopt cloud technologies.

Lastly, our partner Polycom has come out with a number of interesting video solutions in the past year. On the VoIP side, they have released the VVX500 and VVX600 which are camera-ready phones which are fully supported on our platform. Video has been something that has been promised to small business for years, and it seems that now the price point is finally down where it’s affordable. It still has to be proven that businesses need/want video as a communications tool, but with the price of the VVX phones at a similar price point to our regular VoIP phones, it will make sense to a lot of businesses to purchase the VVX options in order to future-proof themselves. We’ll have an announcement on pricing of the VVX line of phones in the new year.

So, Happy Birthday Versature! Looking forward to what the next 10 years brings us.

“Count your life by smiles, not tears. Count your age by friends, not years.”

Paul Emond - President, CEO

Paul Emond is a serial entrepreneur with a technology focus. A past company was recognized as one of the Top 100 Fastest Growing Companies in Canada, and more recently Versature was honoured with the “Small Business of the Year” award from the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce.

Versature turns 10 years old on Thursday, December 20th. As part of the lead-up to that day, we’re going to be publishing a couple of blog posts looking at the past, present and future of the company. Today we focus on where we are today.

I often find myself discounting the huge benefits that we provide as a Cloud-based VoIP provider because I’ve been using the technology for years now, and I presume that everyone has those features. I use productivity tools like Find-me/Follow-me, Voicemail-to-Email, Softphones and Twinning on a daily basis and couldn’t do without them.

Yesterday I was invited to the City Of Ottawa to chat with their Economic Development Officer about our company and the innovative things that we are doing. You’d figure that a municipality as big as the City of Ottawa would have the latest and greatest technology no? Well, you’d be wrong. Everyone has dated Mitel handsets on their desks. Lively discussion centered around taking their extension with them on their smartphone (softphone support), Voicemail-to-Email and No-Reservation Conferencing. I think their eyes glossed over when I tried to explain “twinning”, or the ability to have a duplicate of your desk phone at your home office or elsewhere.

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Versature turns 10 years old on Thursday, December 20th.  As part of the lead-up to that day, we’re going to be publishing a couple of blog posts looking at the past, present and future of the company.  Today we focus on how we got here.

I think most people know that Versature was a spin off from a company I used to own called TechSupport.ca, which was started right after I left school in 1993.  Around the year 2000 my ex-partner and I were looking for a name for our “rentable apps” business that we were working on, and I challenged the staff to come up with some names that were unique enough that we could trademark them and get the associated domain names.  I was partial to Versature, which was a combination of the words ‘Versatile’ and ‘Venture’.  My ex-partner liked Vurtur, I think because it was shorter.  That wasn’t the only thing that we disagreed on and shortly thereafter he had left to start his own business.  Although we didn’t work that well together, we’ve remained friends to this day, and he’s been very successful with his business (called Vurtur by the way).

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Jonathon Moody (left) and Paul Emond

Versature wins Small Biz of the Year at the OBAA’s!

This post is a little late in getting out because to be honest, I’m still a little bit in shock at winning. To be clear, Versature was nominated by our accountants and competed in the Small Business of the Year category of which there were dozens of entries, and 14 strong finalists from across the city of Ottawa. We had a luncheon a couple of weeks ago and I was impressed with the stories I heard about all these cool businesses and their successes. Continue Reading This Post ...