Technical and commercial development were the hallmarks of 2023!

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2023 was a year of growth for our company, Belledonne Communications, which supports the development of the Linphone, Liblinphone and Flexisip open-source software applications. It was marked by a significant increase in the size of our team and the development of several new add-on modules and features. Our sales results reflect our commitment to quality and customer satisfaction.

Sales results:

We are delighted to announce that in 2023, we posted €2 million in sales, which were up compared with 2022, for a total increase of around 50% over a six-year period.

In 2023, 85 different companies contributed to the company’s sales; 80% of these were located abroad. Half of our income came from annual support contracts (bug-fix warranty), a quarter from the sale of services (Linphone customizations, new developments funded by our customers, training for developers, etc.), and the last quarter from source-code licenses, for third-party developers seeking to free themselves from the obligations associated with open-source software licenses.

Achievements and completed projects

Over the course of the year, we had the opportunity to work on 20 different projects on behalf of our customers. Each and every one of these was a success, thanks to the expertise and commitment of our teams. They enabled us to expand and perfect the set of features provided in our app, for example with:

  • The release of our video conferencing server: Flexisip Conference Server;​
  • The development of the Flexisip B2BUA module for interconnection with PSTN gateways;
  • The integration of AV1, a modern video codec that is revolutionizing the quality of video calls by efficiently compressing streams. Within Linphone, it offers clearer, sharper video footage and uses less bandwidth, thus meeting expectations for superior-quality visual communication;
  • The enhancement of chat features, for example with the display of the Instant Message Delivery Notification (IMDN) status for the last message sent in a chat room, the addition of message reactions (emojis), and more;
  • The addition of an “attended” call transfer feature (read the article).

 

Organization and growth of the Belledonne Communications teams

Our staff is currently made up of 27 employees and two founders. Our various teams are broken down as follows:

  • Linphone-SDK teams: Five software engineers, two contract engineers
  • Application development team (Linphone): One Android engineer, two iOS engineers, one engineer specializing in desktop user interfaces, and one contract engineer;
  • Server development team (Flexisip): Five software engineers;
  • System administration and server team: Three software engineers and one software development apprentice;
  • Support functions: sales & marketing manager, business developer, project/product manager and product management apprentice, communications officer, sole accountant.

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Our staff also grew considerably in 2023: our dynamic company had the pleasure of welcoming seven new employees over the course of the year! Their varied expertise and passion for taking up technical challenges are providing exciting new prospects for our teams. We have five software engineers whose advanced skills and strong command of software technologies constitute major assets for our projects and customers. This year, we welcomed two apprentices, one software engineer and one project manager, all of whom are prepared to bring a fresh perspective to our projects. 

Contribution to the “France 2030” plan – French collaborative suite

We are proud to be involved in the “France 2030” plan, as part of one of the winning consortia in the call for projects on “cloud-based collaborative office suites.”  The aim for the French government is to obtain “complete, integrated, high-quality SecNumCloud-certified collaborative office suites,” as stated in the press release dated April 4, 2023 (read the press release - In French).

The platform in question is being proposed by a consortium of partners, made up of Interstis, BlueMind, XWiki (CryptPad), Belledonne Communications (Linphone), Scille (ParSec), and Tranquil IT. Together, through this initiative driven by the French government, we are developing a complete collaborative suite made up of various software applications, based on mature solutions that are already distributed to customers. The result of this partnership will be a sovereign collaborative suite revolving around a unified user experience and the development of new uses; it will aim to compete with Office 365.

This project, deployed on SecNumCloud-certified infrastructure provided by 3DS Outscale, will integrate BlueMind messaging, the Interstis online collaborative platform, the CryptPad encrypted office suite, secure unified communications with Linphone, secure storage with ParSec, and customer asset management with Tranquil IT. 

Our role in this project demonstrates our commitment to the development of innovative, sovereign solutions.

Future prospects

--- for the R&D team

The year 2024 will mark the release of Linphone 6.0, following a whole year of R&D work and a major graphic overhaul with our partner agency specializing in UX/UI design. The aim is to provide end users with an easy-to-use solution, in line with current application standards, while guaranteeing a high level of security and retaining the possibility of interoperability with other SIP solutions. 

The server team’s main challenges will focus on scalability and the extension of high availability to all the suite’s modules, as well as on integration with third-party components already deployed in our customers’ information systems (SSO, directory management, etc.).

In particular, the SDK team will see the release of one of the largest projects it has led in recent years: an end-to-end encryption solution for audio/video conferences. Other work will involve the addition of new features for group calls (screen sharing, the ability to join a call without an account, access to chat during a conference call, etc.).

Furthermore, work will also begin in 2024 to bring Linphone back to browsers – we are looking forward to telling you more about this soon!

--- For sales & marketing

One of our major challenges for 2024 will be the redesign of our website. We are planning to completely overhaul the click path so that it better meets the varied needs of visitors, whether they are individual or professional users, developers, or network administrators. This showcase site is a way for us to highlight our solutions, documentation and latest news. It is therefore your main gateway for gathering information and getting in touch with us. 

The year 2024 will also see the launch of a new on-premise and private cloud-based sales model, in which the Linphone/Flexisip suite will be deployed in both public and private organizations. 

Of course, we have not forgotten developers or the open-source community, who are integrating our software components into their products; we will be sure to continue working to create ever more dedicated content for these valuable customers.

 

The last word,

“Our technical team has considerably grown in recent years, reaching maturity. The year 2024 promises to be filled with new features and will take our software applications to new heights in terms of robustness, agility and efficiency” – Simon Morlat, a co-founder of Belledonne Communications and the original author of Linphone.