Cloud Telephony

With just a few days left in 2012, there’s no better time than now to pause, take a step back and reflect on the great things that happened in the past year. Fonality (News - Alert), a cloud telephony provider, is a company that certainly had a year for the books.

The Fonality 5 innovation series is one of the biggest highlights of the year, a set of five new innovations to power small businesses.

“We’re continuing to build out world-class infrastructure for hosted VoIP while at the same time regaining leadership from software innovation,” said David Scult, CEO of Fonality, in a TMCnet interview. The idea behind the Fonality 5 series was a “constant drum beat” approach instead of a “big bang” announcement. The company wants to continue to hold a presence in the industry as an innovator and wants to excite and inspire the marketplace, and that’s why Fonality 5 was born.

2012 introduced HUD Mobile, Voicemail Transcription and Screen Share capabilities as part of the Fonality 5 rollouts. HUD Mobile is a fully featured mobile client that works on Android and Apple (News - Alert) tablets and smartphones. It is an extension of Heads Up Display, a unified communications application that connects your phone, your desktop and your organization by consolidating all communications into a single easy-to-use interface. Voicemail Transcription is a real-time machine transcription of voices messages that transcribes voicemail with about 80 to 85 percent accuracy. It’s ideal for execs and people that constantly need to be checking their messages. Screen Share is an on-demand meeting place that can be launched directly from the unified dashboard. With the ability to share presentations on the fly, demo products for potential customers or partners from any location and help customers with support issues through remote desktop management, this meeting place environment helps nurture the sales process, and promote customer engagement while enhancing employee productivity and mobility.

Image via Fonality

Fonality also introduced a game-changing product this year; the Fonality Web Client, an advanced Web-based application designed to simplify the way SMBs use their phone system to communicate and conduct business. In its beta release, Fonality Web Client incorporates the features and functionality of Fonality Heads Up Display (HUD) and HUD Mobile, yet totally changes the user experience into a personalized social community. It enables an easy access point for SMBs to interact, manage contacts and streamline workflow anywhere, anytime, offering support for PC, laptop, smartphone and tablet integration (Android (News - Alert) &Apple). The interface is designed to focus the user experience on building a community of people and conversations vs. functions and features — transforming the way SMBs communicate and conduct business.

“It’s not just a Web client, it changes the architecture of Fonality,” said Scult. “We have several hundred thousand users who have ongoing subscriptions with us where they have their PBX on-premises, yet in the cloud we have their license management, their software distribution and we have their control panel. We’ve called that hybrid-hosted. Through the Fonality 5 and the Web Client, what we’ve done is allow them to have their voice anywhere, but the UC capabilities will run in the cloud.”

Why is this a big deal? Aren’t they running some of those UC capabilities today?

“Why it makes such a big difference is that we can do updates on a daily basis for bug fixing, new features for enhancements, usability feedback, and everyone of our customers, whether they’re in the cloud or on-premises, will have the same version of that software without having to upgrade anything on their servers,” said Scult. “What the Web Client allows us to do is have everybody on the same version of the client. We run these Web servers in the cloud and that’s where the business logic, that’s where the ‘the special sauce’ is, and then they have their PBX local or in the cloud.”

Existing Fonality customers who would like to join the beta program can go to www.Fonality.com/beta for more information. Beta testers only need a Fonality business phone system to use the new Web-based HUD. The Fonality Web Client will be generally available in early 2013.

“It’s truly game-changing, being able to have a UC SaaS offering that talks to a local PBX, a private cloud PBX or a public cloud PBX, and we’re the only ones in the industry that can do that,” said Scult.

2012 was also a huge year for Scult. He was appointed as CEO in January, coming from more than 30 years in the software industry from companies such as Groove Networks, Lotus, IBM (News - Alert) and Microsoft.

“What I was looking for was a company with a ton of growth potential,” explained Scult. “What was exciting for me when I found Fonality, or Fonality found me, was that the company was in process. They had been in process for seven years and they were in the middle of this transition of having a cloud-based offering. I was thrilled in terms of being appointed the CEO of Fonality to continue to execute on its vision.”

Industry observers will no doubt watch Fonality move more business to the cloud, but Scult made a point of noting that the company does not want to completely move away from the notion of the on-premise solution. The goal is not to keep convincing the customers that the cloud is better, but it will be which method of deployment for the cloud is the best.

“With 11 months under my belt, I feel absolutely great,” said Scult. “It was everything I was hoping for. A lot of work still to be done, to shape, mold and further define the product strategy, to take some of the lessons learned. It’s been a really good experience for me, and a great set of people who are very passionate about what they do and they’re very receptive to a new CEO and my vision, which is really about evolving the company.”

With an exciting year almost behind it, Fonality has a lot to build on for the upcoming year and a lot of innovation in store for 2013. We’re excited to see where the 2013 takes the company!

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