A series of events at Fuzebox has led to a fundamental change in the way the company will operate. A new round of funding, a new CEO, new staff and the change to a freemium business model highlight the company’s new direction.
Based in San Francisco, Fuzebox provides cloud-based services for VoIP, video and conferencing communications. It recently hired David Obrand as its new CEO and several new staff, all of whom came from another San Francisco company, Yammer (News - Alert).
Yammer is an enterprise social network that connects employees to one another so they can collaborate on their work. It was bought out by Microsoft (News - Alert) in 2012.
With $26 million from the funding and the influx of new people at the company, Fuzebox is transitioning to a freemium business model: basic services are available at no charge, but services beyond that level require payment of a fee.
Fuzebox offers features that make it competitive with other conferencing solutions like GoToMeeting: screen sharing, high-definition video and support for multiple platforms, even iOS and Android (News - Alert).
The free plan lets customers have free VoIP calling and unlimited U.S. toll audio for 60 days. The more deluxe plans have support for more participants in a meeting and unlimited toll audio. The Fuze Pro plan is the next step up at $8 per month.
The Fuze Enterprise package, which has the most features offered by Fuzebox, is $20 per month. In addition to the Fuze Pro plan, the Fuze Enterprize package offers LDAP and SAML support, the ability to run in webinar mode, an admin console and support for other conference solutions.
Earlier this year, Citrix’ GoToMeeting received recognition from Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert) as a Web conferencing market leader for 2012. While that may be an advantage for Citrix, Fuzebox has positioned its services well to compete with Citrix on price. GoToMeeting costs $49 per month and only supports 25 connections. The Fuze Pro package is one-sixth the cost and supports 125 users.
It’s going to come down to reliability for Fuzebox. No one will jump off the Citrix bandwagon if it’s a pain in the neck to run a Fuze meeting. With customers like Ogilvy (News - Alert), Evernote and GM on board with Fuzebox, that doesn’t seem likely, however.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson