Tell us about the company IceWarp.
IceWarp is a global leader for developing email communication and collaboration solutions and is the only alternative to MS Exchange, Office 365, and GSuite. IceWarp entirely changes the concept of how teams share information online and optimize business processes through its streamlined and seamless team collaboration solutions, by providing an ultimate all-in-one collaboration platform. It’s a whole new family of apps with real-time collaboration tools, easy sharing options, integration of various virtual office functions right at user’s fingertips. The platform integrates everything that is required under a single login – Email, Teamchat, and Storage, etc.
IceWarp offers its users ease of use, security, and efficiency through its comprehensive end- to- end solution for all their office work in a single window, without needing any third-party applications.
What are your expectations for the company Post – COVID 19, have you designed a go-to-market strategy for 2020 and beyond?
The ability to be connected and being able to collaborate with the teams is the utmost priority for every organization today. With the current scenario, demand for collaboration is already up and it’s going to grow much beyond. We will see lots of companies moving from basic mailing solutions to offerings that have complete collaborative features. CEO’s and CFO’s will mandate cost-effective solutions to be looked upon to ensure cash flows are maintained without compromising on features and capabilities of the technology.
As a matter of fact, we have already started seeing momentum building up and most of the Enterprises have been talking to us to upgrade them to the latest technology, since we are the only alternative to Office 365 and G Suite. Organizations are already evaluating and contemplating IceWarp and are in high-level discussions, how we can help them upgrade technology along with helping them gain better TCO (Total cost of ownership).
What are the challenges faced by the company during the lockdown period? What measures has the company taken to tackle them?
For an IT service company, there are three stakeholders – the organisations, the employees and the customers. While as a well-developed and equipped company, we have the necessary infrastructure and the employees were able to adapt to the work from home scenario much easily. However, issues had arisen and our Support team had to put in extra hours for the customers who were not equipped with and had no experience of remote work. The support team also efficiently managed those customers who had lack of confidence that remote work might hamper data security or delivery of outcome. The lockdown made it impossible for teams to travel to office and have direct interface with customers, especially those customers who needed backend technical support and immediate need of setting-up Collaboration tools. This had brought about an unexpected challenge, but our teams were on their toes to support our customers and were available to help them over phone calls in using the features and updating them via-specially curated webinars, group calls, run-throughs to let them know how they can effectively use IceWarp’s tools to their optimum use.
IceWarp believes that Customer Support is the heart of any service-driven organization, hence we have a 24×7 round the clock customer service available and we ensure we continue the same even in lockdown and equipped our team with essential set-up to keep the wheel-running non-stop and without any hindrance as they Work From Home. Furthermore we also announced free (beta version) use of our Video conferencing tools available for everyone world-wide to do our bit and help the unprepared organization deal with the pandemic effectively.
What are measures undertaken by IceWarp due to the Pandemic – For Employees and Customers?
At IceWarp, the security of our employees is of utmost priority. Considering the fact and owing to health concerns our employees are currently working from home. Even after the lockdown period, we will be emphasizing to continue WFH till the time we feel the situation is better.
IceWarp taking the lead, devised a protocol, wherein PramodSharda, CEO, IceWarp India & Middle East decided and announced to take a 100% pay cut for the rest of the year safeguarding the employees of IceWarp and promising no salary-cuts or layoffs. It is invariably important for companies to take the right step while taking care of their employees, assuring them certainty.
And while talking of customers, IceWarp believes in providing its customers with solutions that enable them with a seamless experience for their employees. To help the customers during these times, IceWarp has come up with a tailor-made session for its customers called “IceWarp’s Chai PeCharcha” on its latest version 12.3 of “Deep Castle”. With this drive, IceWarp is not only taking this opportunity to e-meet the customers but also bringing an opportunity to exchange thoughts over the personalized webinar.
Unlike any other webinar, IceWarp aims to make ‘Chai Pe Charcha’ a conversational, knowledge-sharing, and learning exchange. Furthermore, this will inculcate support to the customers by training and helping them with the best alternatives, understanding of tools and also organizing sessions on remote working.
How has IceWarp business been during the lockdown as compared to the Pre-COVID era?
The current scenario has opened up newer avenues with demand increasing for collaboration tools. Every organization is looking for solutions that can make Work From Home a seamless experience for its employees. Having tools that can be used to engage with their partners, customers and employees across geographies give an upper edge.
Today everyone is virtually attending webinars, meetings, collaborating on the go with multiple devices. All this has fueled the growth for players like us. And we being flexible in our offerings can cater to the market by helping organizations save their TCO (Total cost of ownership). Our value proposition largely revolves around “Pay for what you use” and “Go Hybrid”. That’s the reason today we are looked as the perfect alternative to MS Office 365 & G Suite.
To cater to this growing demand we are already working with top SI’s of the country and reaching out to our target audience. And we have a strong sales and technical team working in the market to cater to our customers and prospects.
How has IceWarp transformed the current challenges into opportunities for growth?
The current scenario has opened up newer avenues with demand increasing for collaboration tools. Every organization is looking for solutions that can make WFH a seamless experience for its employees. Having tools that can be used to engage with their partners, customers and employees across geographies give you an upper edge.
Today everyone is virtually attending webinars, meetings, collaborating on the go with multiple devices. All this has fueled the growth for players like us. And we being flexible in our offerings can cater to the market by helping organizations save their TCO (Total cost of ownership). Our value proposition largely revolves around “Pay for what you use” and “Go Hybrid”. That’s the reason today we are looked as the perfect alternative to MS Office 365 & G Suite.
How do you think Deep Castle is helping the remote workers in boosting their productivity?
While Work From Home has become a reality for the majority of the industries, it requires a comprehensive platform/solution to carry out the same. We at IceWarp offer a complete Communication and Collaboration Suite to our customers and have seamless WFH experiences with our customers raving about our features.
Our new version upgrade Deep Castle Gen 1 comes with enhanced features and makes it much easier for organizations to enable seamless working for their employees even in a remote work scenario. Deep Castle Gen 1 allows one to collaborate in real-time for documents, spreadsheets, and presentations with colleagues across the world enhancing the WFH experience for all employees. It further integrates video calls into Team Chats; adding WebFlow integrations with 3rd party services enhancing security capabilities.
In Deep Castle we also offer our TeamChat feature which our customers love, where one can bcc email communications to TeamChat enabling real-time project management apart from having group chats on a secure channel.
Do you agree that the popularity of video conferencing platforms has compelled other players to come up with some innovation in their offerings? How are you looking to stay ahead in this competitive landscape?
The ability to be connected and being able to collaborate with the teams is the utmost priority for every organization today. With the current scenario, demand for Collaboration is already up and it’s going to grow much beyond. As the enterprises and government organizations are considering video conferencing as an ultimate solution to connect with remote workers, customers, and employees; and, at the same time, it prevents direct contact with the people. Many companies are moving from basic mailing solutions to offerings that have complete collaborative features. CEO’s and CFO’s will mandate cost-effective solutions to be looked upon to ensure cash flows are maintained without compromising on features and capabilities of the technology.
In our latest version upgrade we have added multiple-participant video conferencing features, to do our bit we made the beta version absolutely FREE for everyone all across the world. We have been hearing about privacy issues as well as bandwidth consumption issues with other platforms which primarily has been addressed in our platform. We at IceWarp don’t capture or store data of users in any way and are also hosted in Indian datacenters. We are further adding up innovations that would be useful in the remote working scenario for all across industries.
We provide our customers data privacy, unparalleled security and efficiency through our complete solution for all their office work in a single window
Industry reports suggest that remote working is going to become the new normal. In such a scenario, what are the best practices that your customers and partners should adopt? What’s your preparedness to handle such requirements in the future?
We believe this culture is here to stay and this is the new normal further it might as well be the future. Today, at this juncture, remote working has become a routine task, in these challenging times; we need to have a mindset and understanding that with the right technology tools, work can be done efficiently, no matter where one is located.
Help your employees with tools that they can engage with their customers, prospects or internal teams, let them collaborate on projects on a real-time basis and updates, help them co-create documents and be participative. All of this is possible with the right kind of solution in place.
To build custom solutions that best fit customers IceWarp analyzes the problem areas that keep an organization from achieving the set goals and design systems and practices to overcome the difficulties that have delayed them in the past. By collaborating and understanding the unique business requirements, IceWarp is able to generate tailor-made solutions that allow an organization to work more efficiently and communicate proactively with their clients.