Big news over at Altigen. Jerry Fleming who ran the Vonexus division of Interactive Intelligence is at Altigen now and will focus on building the US operations of the company. I haven’t had a chance to talk with Jerry yet but his title will be President and COO.

 

Gilbert Hu will continue to lead AltiGen Communications as Chairman & CEO.

 

A word of history. Back in 1995 or so Altigen really wowed the telecom market with the world’s first PC PBX. Comdial was also doing similar things at this time and others like Mitel showed me some similar initiatives.

 

IP PBXs are nice and all but before these devices came to the telecom industry we had this stepping stone approach of PC-based PBXs.

 

In the late nineties I spoke at an Inter-Tel reseller meeting and after one of talks, one of the resellers asked whether they should wait for IP PBXs to be invented or start reselling PC PBXs. I am not sure specifically what my answer was but I likely mentioned opportunity cost. The point is the mindset of resellers was trying to figure out whether the PC-based solution or the IP–based solution made the most sense.

 

Gilbert is one of the major visionaries behind the PC PBX space and launched a successful company that made it through the bubble. Many who competed in this space did not make it through. I give him and the company a great deal of credit.

 

Jerry’s work is cut out for him as I am sure the goal here is to establish Altigen to its former levels of glory and thought leadership. Having worked at Interactive Intelligence, Jerry knows about innovation so this jump is a natural one.

 

It will be interesting to see how well the company does under the leadership of Gilbert and Jerry.