I got a chance to sit down with Eric Borrmann, COO of Fonality (News - Alert), a leading provider of cloud telephony and unified communications solutions, at ITEXPO West 2011 in Austin, TX last month, and he shed some light on how the company is gauging the progress of communications technology. Keeping a close eye on the complex growth of mobility in business has led Fonality to develop a mobile version of its acclaimed HUD solution for the small- and medium-sized business.
Borrmann told me that HUD Mobility is particularly essential for the small business while the SMB has, typically, 25 percent of its workforce “deployed in the field. They need that ability to be able to communicate not just in the office, but outside as well.” He noted that Fonality has traditionally been known for its IP-PBX (News - Alert) solutions, although the company is gaining recognition for its latest hosted solutions as well.
“We already have interest in the HUD Mobile product, we have about 6,000 licenses, so we’ve experienced a very quick uptake on that,” Borrmann stated. Of course, the cloud telephony provider did just recently reveal the general availability of its HUD Mobile application for iPhone and Android (News - Alert) devices as well.
Fonality finds that the SMB is in need of contact center-type solutions, but often cannot afford what the larger vendors can provide. “We fill that gap very well for the small business,” said Borrmann. “The unified communications capability of Fonality is one of the areas we’ve been focusing on, especially the contact center capability.”
And, indeed, the company has witnessed significant success through this model, just last week announcing that it had processed over 3 billion calls.
“Our focus is really the 10-100 space. We offer the customer a hosted solution and a hybrid solution. Most of our competitors only offer a hosted solution or a premise-based solution,” Borrmann noted. Check out the rest of our interview here for more details on how Fonality is bringing mobility to the SMB.
Juliana Kenny graduated from the University of Connecticut with a double degree in English and French. After managing a small company for two years, she joined TMC (News - Alert) as a Web Editor for TMCnet. Juliana currently focuses on the call center and CRM industries, but she also writes about cloud telephony and network gear including softswitches.
Edited by Chris DiMarco