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Despite the recession, and for the second year running, VoIP and unified communications (UC) software and services provider Clarus Systems (News - Alert) on Monday reported solid, positive financial results for fiscal year 2010.

Clarus finished out 2010 with a balance sheet showing cash flow positive, and reported significant customer and revenue growth. During 2010, its contracted books nearly doubled, ending at 177 percent of 2009 bookings. Revenues were 130 percent of what came in during 2009. 

The company’s CEO, Brendan Reidy (News - Alert), attributed these impressive numbers to an influx of new customers, including winning accounts from well-known organizations in government, financial services and healthcare. Those accounts were won in part through partnerships with Microsoft, Cisco, and HP.

Of course, none of this would be possible if the company didn’t fill a market need, which is does through delivery of robust monitoring and testing solutions designed to keep UC systems running.

The recently upgraded ClarusIPC+ Plus, version 4.0, is a key part of the Clarus’ hosted and cloud-based UC initiative. This new version of Clarus’ flagship product provides UC testing and monitoring features, and supports integration with solutions from well-known vendors like HP and Cisco (News - Alert).

On the marketing front, earlier this month Clarus launched its TMCnet channel, VoIP Management, which features industry news and information resources from the company to support and inform its customer base.

2010 was certainly a busy year for Clarus in terms of product launches and integration with other solutions on the market to complement their functionality.

Back in November, ClarusIPC Plus+ achieved certification for compatibility with HP’s Network Node Manager i 9. Combining HP Network Node Manager with ClarusIPC Plus+ gives IT manager more visibility into their Cisco IP telephony and UC applications. IT staff can now use ClarusIPC to monitor daily configuration change, troubleshooting, call history and other activity through Cisco’s UC Manager and Unity systems.

Also in November, Clarus’ Migration Certification Service won a Unified Communications (News - Alert) Excellence Award from TMC.

Making improvements to its software and services, and then creating market value for those improvements through tie-ins with solutions from other vendors, was a major thrust for Clarus during 2010. For example, back in July, the company enhanced automated testing capabilities for ClarusIPC Plus+, resulting in tighter integration with HP Network Node Manager and other networks systems.

Earlier in the year, Clarus released version 2.6.3 of ClarusIPC Plus+, with support for Cisco UC Manager 8.0, along with better call utilization, performance monitoring and traffic analysis tools. This brought the product up a notch from being merely an automated testing solution to a full Cisco VoIP management suite.

During 2010, Clarus’ focus broadened from IP telephony alone to include any type of integrated application that might be found within a data system. That includes voicemail system integration, telepresence and video.

Looking ahead, Clarus has big plans for 2011 and beyond.

“Our goals for 2011 include additional enablement of Unified Communications in the Cloud through the ongoing development of partnerships that embed Clarus Systems’ technology into Hosted and Cloud-based UC offerings,” Reidy said in a statement to the press.

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