SUBSCRIBE TO TMCnet
TMCnet - World's Largest Communications and Technology Community

CHANNEL BY TOPICS


QUICK LINKS




VoIP Phone System Maker Fonality Acquires CRM Solutions Provider Insightful Solutions

TMCnews


TMCnews Featured Article


November 05, 2007

VoIP Phone System Maker Fonality Acquires CRM Solutions Provider Insightful Solutions

By Patrick Barnard, Group Managing Editor, TMCnet


Moving deeper into the unified communications space, VoIP phone system maker Fonality (News - Alert) has reportedly acquired Insightful Solutions Pty Ltd., one of the world’s largest SugarCRM development houses and a SugarCRM Gold partner for the Australia, New Zealand and the Asia Pacific regions. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.


Through the integration of Insightful’s open CRM solution, based on SugarCRM, with Fonality’s phone system software, SMBs will have access to an advanced unified communications/mobile CRM solution that delivers presence management, instant messaging, fixed and mobile calling, and a 360 degree view of customers and business partners. The combined solution, destined to be a powerful business tool, will be called “FonalityCRM.”

The deal means Fonality can immediately start selling Insightful’s SugarCRM managed service offering. Insightful has made substantial enhancements to this hosted solution, which is now deployed to more than 1,000 seats in 13 countries. The service is hosted at Insightful’s three global data centers. These three data centers are obviously a major asset which Fonality has now acquired. Such facilities can be a key bargaining chip in the negotiations when it comes to acquisitions of this type. In addition, Fonality has gained Insightful’s knowledge and experience supporting SugarCRM deployments, through acquisition of its personnel, as well as its world-class support infrastructure.

“FonalityCRM” will now come integrated with Fonality’s PBXtra and trixbox Pro offerings. Ideal for smaller companies with customer-facing call centers, as well as those with mobile workforces, it provides click-to-call dialing, agent screen pops, telephone campaign management for outbound sales teams, and more.

The new, combined solution will be hosted at one of Fonality’s six data centers. It will be made available immediately to PBXtra and trixbox Pro customers worldwide.

“Fonality has over 1,000 hybrid-hosted call centers deployed in 25 different countries and our hybrid-hosted platform is a powerful framework for delivering integrated applications directly to the SMB with no investment in premise equipment required,” said Chris Lyman, Fonality CEO, in a press release. “Telephony and CRM have a naturally concentric relationship, so this is good place to leverage hybrid-hosted and we are thrilled that the great folks at Insightful have joined forces with us to accelerate our unified offering to the global SMB marketplace.”

Fonality has decided to bring on the entire Insightful team, including co-founder and CEO Marc Englaro, who will now serve as general manager of Fonality’s CRM Division. In addition, Fonality will continue to operate the Insightful offices in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore,

“In Fonality we found a like-minded team which values going beyond simple integration, and building fully conjoined products that expand the definition of what’s on the market today,” Englaro said. “Together we’re going to continue to raise the bar for what people expect from both VoIP and CRM.

TMC President and Editor-in-Chief Rich Tehrani (News - Alert) broke the news about this acquisition at 12:05 a.m. ET today. To read his article, based on his podcast interview with Fonality officials last week, click here.

For more information, visit www.fonality.com.

----------

Patrick Barnard is Associate Editor for Customer Interaction Solutions magazine and Assignment Editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit Patrick Barnard’s columnist page.







Technology Marketing Corporation

2 Trap Falls Road Suite 106, Shelton, CT 06484 USA
Ph: +1-203-852-6800, 800-243-6002

General comments: [email protected].
Comments about this site: [email protected].

STAY CURRENT YOUR WAY

© 2024 Technology Marketing Corporation. All rights reserved | Privacy Policy