Toshiba is a company you think about in just about every area of tech. In fact I recently ditched my old laptop from another manufacturer for a Toshiba laptop and so far so good. When you think of this Japanese electronics giant you may not think about VoIP or even communications.

 

But Toshiba is in fact taking the communications space very seriously and in fact they have had business communications systems for a long while. Generally the company has kept a low profile on their communications products in the US but perhaps that will change going forward. I have seen a bit more activity from them in the past 12 months and this in encouraging.

 

Last January, the company announced the appointment of Brian Metherell as Toshiba America Information Systems’ vice president and general manager of its Telecommunications Systems Division.

 

Since he was having his first anniversary I decided it was a great time to ask Brian a few questions about his vision, open source and the competition. Here is the full Executive Suite interview.

 

Why did I pick Metherell as a person to interview? In a word – quality. In a meeting a while back he reiterated his company’s desire to deliver VoIP systems with the best quality. He drilled it into my had in fact.

 

If the company can deliver on the quality promise and also continue to up the level of noise they produce in the market, they are in a position to gain some share from other vendors.