Virtual Office Resource

December 15 will see the sad end of the once widely popular AOL (News - Alert) Instant Messenger; it is like the end of the original messaging era. Now CLX Communications has a similar announcement to make. As of early December, CLX announced it will retire its A2P messaging brand, Mblox, for good.

Mblox started in 2000 as one of the first A2P (application to person) SMS to business ventures in the world. Two years ago, CLX acquired Mblox for $117 million and has now begun merging the two organizations along with CardBoardFish, an Mblox messaging acquisition from 2014.

Robert Gerstmann, Co-founder and Director, CLX, said: "We're incredibly proud of the success and heritage of Mblox; one of the foremost brands in mobile messaging that myself, and many of my colleagues here at CLX, had a direct hand in creating.”

But, while this signals the end of a brand (two, in fact), CLX isn’t overlooking the power of business messaging, which is becoming widely adopted as a communications medium.  Next week, when both Mblox and CardBoardFish are moved offline, users will be redirected to the CLX portfolio.

Until recently, enterprise messaging has largely been a one-way communication, used for marketing, notifications, two-factor authentication, and such.  But, as businesses look for innovative ways to communicate with their customers, they are increasingly seeing messaging as the preferred medium.  A 2015 study by Ovum (News - Alert) suggested that the greatest obstacle to enterprise messaging was a lack of feature-richness.  In fact, more than half of the survey’s respondents said they would likely use messaging more if additional features and integration was made available, including two-way capabilities.  Cloud-based communications platforms are making that a reality today, and Ovum’s most recent report shows a steady increase in messaging use among businesses.

Gerstmann went on to add, "Our mission at CLX is simple – to be the leading cloud communications company; to achieve this goal it was always our intention to integrate the companies and gain strength from having one unified brand offering under the CLX name."

CLX has a hand in nearly every aspect of technology from, of course, messaging, voice/VoIP, SIP integration, videoconferencing, data services, web tools, and IoT. Some of its biggest customers include Panasonic, Microsoft (News - Alert), Viber, Domino’s Pizza, and Renault.

It is always sad to watch the familiar fade away, but the hope is that something bigger and better will emerge from it all.