Phil Burkett, founder of Communication Resources Inc., started his telecommunications company in 1980 at what he says was the dawn of the modern digital age.
He began by selling the world’s first digital phone system to corporations, and some of those customers are still with CRI today.
“Chattem was our very first sale after we started in 1980, and they’re still our customer today,” said Mr. Burkett, who remains CEO of the 26-employee company.
Mr. Burkett noted that while technology solutions have changed over the decades, desire for universal access to work information and communication resources from anywhere has remained the same.
“It was always common at the technology councils to talk about convergence, and it was always three to five years away.”
The Internet changed all that.
“Now you’ve got road warriors who can do everything from the laptop,” Mr. Burkett said. “When I look back over the last 30 years, whatever that concept was of the office of the future, it’s 100 times that now.”
Alan Burdine, recently promoted president of CRI, said he sees an exciting future for his company and for the industry.
“One of the major changes for us in this whole industry is VoIP. Most people think of that as talking over the Internet, but it is a major fundamental change in the way the phone industry connects to the rest of the world,” Mr. Burdine said Internet telephony.
“We want to help companies spread their communications abilities over geography, allowing people to have the same experience at home, on the road or in the office,” Mr. Burdine said.
As technology has gotten cheaper, so has CRI’s target market. Formerly limited to enterprise companies, powerful communication tools have come down in price and complexity to become more accessible to small and medium sized businesses, according to Mr. Burdine.
“I pay $275 for the same technology I used to pay $1,500 for,” Mr. Burdine said. “It’s no longer for large enterprises anymore; five or six employees can take advantage of this technology.”
CRI got its start as a distributor for Northern Telecom, later Nortel, which Mr. Burkett said is today acknowledged as the first company to declare digital technology is the key to the future.
“The concept was to put all of the functions of the desktop and voice communication together, and no one made any money off it, but the concept stuck,” Mr. Burkett said. “Back in the 1980s, people didn’t even know what a network was.”