It has been a year of significant milestones for Munich-based cloud PBX provider NFON AG.
In November the pan-European company announced that they had surpassed 500,000 seats. Earlier in the year they opened an R&D center in Lisbon as part of their plan to double down on expanding their technology stack and improving their product offering.
Among all of these achievements and new processes, in December NFON AG brought on Dr. Klaus von Rottkay to help them build from their success and direct the company as it continues to grow.
Dr. von Rottkay recently caught up with UC Today to discuss the state of cloud telephony, the need for market education, and some of his thoughts on how NFON AG is planning its next steps for the year ahead.
The Power of Market Education — Changing Minds Through Positive Experiences
With a background in technical physics and consulting for McKinsey, Dr. von Rottkay may not fit the typical profile for a cloud telephony CEO, if such a profile is really out there.
However, he tells UC Today that he has been in the Unified Communications and SaaS space since 2009 when he came on board with Microsoft to help lead their sales in Denmark before returning to his native Germany.
Spending time in Denmark during those early days of the cloud gave him the opportunity to learn more about how the Danes were adopting emerging technologies.
“They were close by but had a much different attitude towards adopting technology,” he says, noting how Denmark was more open to cloud technology at that time than the more conservative German market.
When he returned to Germany, he was able to apply many of the lessons learned in the Northern European markets. Specifically, he notes that bringing UC and cloud technologies to Germany required placing an emphasis on security and the need to educate his local market on the benefits of cloud services.
“You have to take data security concerns seriously,” he says, explaining that, “Market participants will think long and hard despite the benefits.
However, he notes that as more organisations move to the cloud, and are gaining more by doing so, the rest of the market has responded positively in their effort to remain competitive.
“There’s a lot of education to be done,” admits Dr. von Rottkay. But by bringing examples of how cloud technology has succeeded in other countries, like his time in Denmark, he has seen a marked increase in adoption.
“When I started back in 2009, nobody was using SaaS,” he says. “A lot has changed in a decade. When I left Microsoft, 2/3s of our customers were using cloud.”
With this experience in helping to shift market openness to adopting new technologies, he hopes to see a similar shift to cloud telephony.
“It is not just white-collar and call centers that are recognising the opportunity of cloud telephony,” he tells UC Today. “More traditional businesses, from factories to retail are realising that going to the cloud saves you money and gives you flexibility."
