For the forgotten 5 million

Tapping into the Fortune 5 million opportunity, Praxon and Vertical Networks are honing their respective integrated business communication solutions by combining Vertical's Instant Office and Praxon's Phone Data eXchange (PDX). Together, the two act as an aggregation point for multiple services, which include voice, messaging, Internet, networking and administration in a single box.

"What [starts as] a luxury for a large business becomes a necessity for a small one," said Tom Williams, president and CEO of Praxon. Without the equivalent capital or appropriate expertise, integrated business communication solutions provide a suite of services and can be supported remotely.

At last week's Networld + Interop show in Las Vegas, Praxon announced a T-1 (1.54 Mb/s) module for its system. All services can be piped back to the service provider network over a T-1 trunk. The module supports up to 24 voice or data channels and integrates a CSU/DSU. Frame relay, point-to-point protocol (PPP) and simple network management protocol (SNMP) are supported.

Praxon targets small businesses, but Vertical is going for the mid-size branch offices market. Last week, Vertical demonstrated InstantOffice, and this week it is announcing a partnership with NCR to help Bell Canada roll out the system to its customers. InstantOffice currently is in European trials.

Integrated business communication solutions let local exchange carriers capitalize on a common small business practice. "The LECs are in retail, but not as much in services," said Reed Henry, vice president of marketing with Vertical. Instead of focusing on access, providers can add services and presumably boost customer loyalty.

"If carriers bundle services and offer multiple services to customers, they'll be more loyal. And they can bill for them [as carriers] lock in customers," Henry said.