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Hosted VoIP Supplier Natural Convergence Completes Round C Funding, Raises $10 Million
 TMCnet Associate Editor
Hosted VoIP  application supplier Natural Convergence ( News - Alert) announced today that it raised $10 million in its round C funding drive, bringing total contributions from venture capital firms to $29 million.
The company’s silhouette hosted VoIP solution is designed specifically for service providers targeting the truly small business market—businesses with 5-50 employees and no IT manager.
“It allows service providers to go out to the small business with a hosted model, which is more affordable,” Natural Convergence’s CFO and co-founder, Mark Murray, told TMCNet in a phone interview.
For small businesses, switching from a hardware-based key system to a hosted VoIP solution is the natural progression of things, Murray said.
“If you don't have the technical capabilities on staff, you are more motivated to have this stuff out of your hands and have someone deliver it as service,” he said.
Natural Convergence’s growth so far is testament to the popularity of hosted VoIP. Murray told TMCnet that service providers offering silhouette report average per-quarter growth of 35 percent.
“It’s an outrageous, exponential growth curve, which we’re proud of,” he said, adding: “This is a very rich offering, a very high-margin offering.”
The latest round of funding was led by venture capital firms Wesley Clover (founded and chaired by telecom industry leader Terry Matthews) and BDC Venture Capital. Other investors include VIMAC and Desjardins Venture Capital Group, Jefferson Partners, Primaxis Technology Ventures, Inc., and Purple Angel.
Funding from this round, Murray said, will allow the company to continue its exponential growth, and to reach cash flow break-even.
“We’ll use this money to help us acquire more service provider customers, and help the customer we do have be more successful with the product,” he told TMCnet.
The funding news comes on the heels of Natural Convergence’s announcement November 14 that Version 3.0 of silhouette is available.
The biggest update to silhouette is a new feature called Mobile Twinning, which lets users take a call on either a desk or a mobile phone, and move within a facility or between multiple locations, all using a single phone number.
Mobile Twinning also lets users transfer calls from a cell to a desktop phone, thereby saving usage minutes.
This new feature make silhouette even more attractive to service providers and end-users.
Voice over IP (VoIP) | X | | A real-time communications system that converts voice into digital packets containing media and signaling data that travel over networks using Internet Protocol....more |
Hosted VoIP | X | | The primary benefit HIPT-Hosted Internet Protocol Telephony is an outsourced hosted solution like a hosted website of IP voice telephony with dynamic data. This is often referred to as "everything is...more |
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