INTERVIEW Lifesize
Lifesize sets eyes on UK
conferencing industry
Following 13 years of promoting open collaboration between systems, Lifesize are now attacking the UK.
CommsBusiness sat down with COO Michael Helmbrecht and VP of UK and Ireland, Jens Vang Lauridsen
Simplicity, that’s what
is driving the comms
industry. Days of complex,
albeit e ective, solutions
are no good to businesses if no
one can use them.
Video conferencing in
particular has received a
torrid time in recent years,
with businesses adopting one,
company-wide solution, only
to run into compatibility
problems when looking to call
another company with di erent
infrastructure.
“We started the other
way, we have always been on
the open, interoperable side”
said Lifesize COO Michael
Helmbrecht.
We interop with as many
solutions that adhere to open
standards as we can and things
that don’t adhere to the most
common industry standards
at the time, such as Skype for
Business or Teams, we build
our own services to be able to
tie to them.
So, we work with Skype,
Teams and WebEx, Blue Jeans,
and Go To Meeting and we can
tie in meetings through Slack or
older hardware and have always
had that approach.”
Helmbrecht added that the
open approach was born out of
venders building in an exclusive
approach as standard.
“We’ve spent a lot of money
and we design, by default, to
be interoperable. Many services
don’t, they are designed by
default to be closed and then
build in connectors to bring in
di erent technologies that you
pay for.
at’s where these
limitations come in, because the
moment that either myself or
my team mates or IT has to pre
pay for me to have the option
to use something. I can’t rely on
that in all scenarios when I have
to know who I’m talking to and
what technology they are using.
e minute that employee
nds that barrier in place they’ll
retreat to ‘I’ll just
use my laptop’
and if that is not
su cient then
they go back
to getting on a
train or a plane
and meeting in
person.”
After
recognising the
frustration with
the systems at the
time, 13 years ago
Lifesize set out on
the mission to o er
ubiquity of access
and quality of
service.
Now that it
feels that it has
enough of a brand
in EMEA, the
video conferencing
provider is
attacking the UK
market with a
plan to increase its
sales team and in
turn, its partners.
“Europe and
West Africa has
been our biggest
market for the
last 10 years,
bigger than the
US” continued Helmbrecht.
“ e UK, within that, has
always been top two or three
but now we are making a
di erent investment in the UK
under Jen’s leadership.”
“We’ve doubled the size of
our sales team so now we have
10 sales directors that can serve
all of the customers and all of
our partners in the UK” said
VP of UK and Ireland Jens
Vang Lauridsen.
“ e opportunity is
tremendous; we have several
hundred end customers but that
represents just a fraction of the
total market that is out there.
ere are two and a half
million businesses in the UK,
25,000 of those have around
100 employees or more which is
a good target for us to start. So,
there is loads for us to go after,
we are always building out,
adding more customers but also
adding more partners.”
Vang Lauridsen said he is
con dent that Lifesize can get
Michael Helmbrecht
a grip of the market that is,
strangely, still growing, adding
that partners have a lot to gain
from working with Lifesize,
boasting a model that gives
predictable, recurring revenues
as well as a pledge to stay 100
percent partner focussed.
“We are a 100 percent
channel driven company and we
are adding to the list almost on
a weekly basis.
“Like a lot of businesses,
our partners like predictability.
ey want to grow their
business over time, they also
like a base to work from.
What Lifesize o ers is a
recurring revenue model. So,
when a partner signs up a new
customer of Lifesize, you could
say that they own that customer
and renew that customers year
in year out and we will pay that
partner year in year out.”
According to the newly
appointed VP of UK&I,
customer behaviours show that
Jens Lauridsen
50 | Comms Business Magazine | October 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
/www.commsbusiness.co.uk