With 17 years of experience behind it, Quobis is one of the most important companies in Galicia's ICT sector, specialising in offering integration services, selling its own solutions and technical network support to telecommunications operators and large companies. The company was founded in 2006 in a completely different context to the current one. Most companies had conventional telephone switchboards and operators were beginning to offer IP voice solutions. Cloud-type tools and remote working, which are now part of everyday life, were still in their infancy. In the words of Iago Soto, founding partner and marketing and sales director of the company, "by coincidence, at that time there was a window of opportunity that allowed us to focus on the area of voice and video communications, and we went for it".

And the venture was a success. With a team of 45 professionals, in 2022 they had a turnover of 4.3 million euros, 70% in the domestic market and the remaining 30% abroad. In addition, they are a totally independent technology company, in which the capital is 100% owned and all decisions depend directly on the company.

Business area and internationalisation

85% of Quobis' market is made up of telecommunications operators (Vodafone, Telefónica, R, Euskaltel, etc.), in addition to large corporations that make up the remaining 15%. The consultancy firm provides its clients with all kinds of voice and video communication solutions, ensuring that platforms from leading manufacturers can communicate with each other and solve interconnection problems between widely used tools, such as Teams, Cisco, etc., with specific switchboards that form part of specific corporate networks, and which make the connection between switchboards from different headquarters viable, as well as customised developments for this type of client, for whom standard solutions do not work. "Cisco or Microsoft are not going to create a function for you just because you are big, because for them you aren't that important, and that means a gap in the market for us, who can develop this type of customised experience," explains Iago Soto.

Quobis Networks has been one of the companies benefitting from Galicia Avanza, the internationalisation accelerator launched by the Xunta de Galicia, through the Galician Innovation Agency, the Galician Institute for Economic Promotion (Igape) and the Galician Technology Park (Tecnópole). In the course of the programme, they have received advice and support to increase the international presence of their Quobis Communication Platform in Latin American countries such as Mexico and Colombia. This platform, based on WebRTC technology, allows operators and large companies to support a wide range of customised cases, providing state-of-the-art multimedia capabilities to existing vocal networks.

In addition to the training part, the participation in Galicia Avanza included a number of actions aimed at building a presence in the region, which on the one hand took the form of participation in a sectorial event in Miami to locate partners and, on the other hand, in carrying out a market study to find out the degree of implementation of technological solutions in the territory.

Sector trends

Currently, in addition to being based in Spain and Miami, Quobis has ongoing initiatives in other countries through European technology platforms, in Horizon Europe innovation projects and also in national CDTI and Red.es programmes, in which they are exploring opportunities related to artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and 5G.

The telecoms sector is changing fast, and they are aware of the need to be in a state of constant evolution. "We can't lose sight of those generational trend factors that influence the way we communicate, such as the fact that young people talk less on the phone, which creates opportunities to use other channels where they can also interact, such as chat," explains Soto.

Artificial intelligence has been applied for some time now to detect anomalous behavioural patterns in telephone traffic or in the well-known systems in telephone calls that consist of saying or dialling a certain number to select one or another option, a training process that was done with practically the same technologies as now, but with less efficient algorithms and at a higher cost. In the words of Quobis' founding partner: "Artificial intelligence will allow us to monitor and make decisions proactively and all these types of things applied to our field, voice calls, video calls, will generate opportunities for us".