From IMDb to Digital Spy and now Sports Mole, Alan Jay has helped set up and run some of the biggest British-born web communities. Alan started providing internet services in the 80s, co-founded IMDb in the 90s, before it was bought by Amazon, and was chairman of Digital Spy when it was bought by Hachette in 2008. As a pioneering internet entrepreneur, Alan is a model early-adopter. When Vonage, a Voice Over IP service, first came to the UK, he quickly signed up. Here he talks about what first attracted him to the service and why, over nine years later, he’s still a satisfied customer.
Why did you start using Vonage?
I first signed up to it very early on because I could see the advantages of their operation. Even on day one they offered really useful features, like emailing you answer phone messages so you didn’t have to have an answering machine.
Where do you work from?
Sports Mole is still a virtual business so I work out of a room in my house and we [Alan and Sports Mole’s editor] meet regularly in various locations to catch up. It allows us to have telephone numbers that are associated with the business and not associated with a location. When we expand into an office the telephone numbers won’t change so it gives a better impression of continuity.
What other tech do you use in business life?
iPhone, MacBook Air 11” (best desktop unix), our website is a custom built CMS running on Amazon’s AWS unix platform running Apache, MySQL, PHP, Varnish, Memcache and SphinxSearch.
How has Vonage helped you manage operations more effectively?
It gives the flexibility so that if you need to move it you can do. It is flexible to the extent that the most surreal thing I did a couple of years ago - I went to the US for a couple of weeks and directed my UK mobile phone number via my Vonage UK number to my US cell phone. A couple of people didn’t believe me so I had to call my mobile number in London to prove it.
I don’t actually make that many phone calls. It is more about the ability to have the flexibility.
How reliable is the service?
I can’t remember the last time I had a problem. It’s so long ago and they sorted it out very quickly.
Why have you stuck with it over all this time?
It’s so simple and it just works. As I move businesses and to different locations the telephone number stays the same. That’s a very nice feature. Even today I find all sorts of ways of using it. The best things about it are the continuity and flexibility.
Thanks, Alan.
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