Thinking Phone Networks Secures $10 Million in Series C Follow-on Funding
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (PRWEB) October 15, 2013 -- Thinking Phone Networks, the leader in unified communications as a service (UCaaS), today announced a $10 million follow-on investment led by existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners and Advanced Technology Ventures. The investment enables the company to continue expansion of international operations, grow global sales and support activities, and fund continued development of key mobility-enabled enterprise communications applications.
“This investment from two of the most successful venture capital firms in the industry allows us to accelerate growth in all areas of our company to meet the increasing global demand for UCaaS that we are seeing in the market,” said Steven Kokinos, president and CEO, Thinking Phone Networks. “Cloud communications adoption has become mainstream, with thousands of midsized and larger enterprises already benefiting from the significant business process improvements and cost savings that cloud deployment brings. We believe we are in a very good position to capitalize on the move to cloud UC.”
Leading industry analyst firm Infonetics Research recently characterized the unified communications space as “on fire,” and estimates that the worldwide UC market will grow 21.3% in 2013. According to Infonetics, Gartner, Frost & Sullivan, IDC, Wainhouse Research, and others, UCaaS application suites are moving steadily toward maturity by fostering the use of new and deeply-integrated business collaboration and communications applications that are changing the very way enterprise organizations stay connected and get work done.
Thinking Phone Networks is uniquely positioned to capitalize on these game changing market dynamics and gain market share by offering enterprises mobility-enabled and analytics-driven single platform collaboration capabilities spanning voice, video, presence and messaging, contact center, and conferencing.
Key to the company’s value is Thinking Phone Networks’ purpose-built and multi-tenant cloud software platform. Developed from the ground up to serve increasingly mobile next generation enterprise requirements, the platform fosters ready integration of third-party off-the-shelf and “home grown” business applications such as CRM and ERP. In addition, the platform addresses the multi-faceted needs of service providers, PBX vendors, and channel partners seeking to easily deploy and scale differentiated cloud UC services. To these customers, Thinking Phone Networks provides extensive back office service deployment, management, and billing tools that speed time-to-market and time-to-revenue.
Also significant is a powerful business intelligence environment which extends workforce optimization to all areas of the enterprise – from the front office, to the back office, to mobile knowledge workers, as well as to those in remote global locations. This cloud analytics capability provides compelling and unparalleled at-a-glance insight into workforce behavior and activities, allowing enterprises to better address human latency issues and enhance corporate best practice efforts to competitive advantage.
“Today’s enterprises need to eliminate outdated premises-based legacy systems and look to the cloud,” said Bob Goodman, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. “Thinking Phone Networks is there to serve them with a robust, cloud-based and carrier-grade service portfolio that is flexible enough to support third-party applications and Web integration. With this investment, we are committing to helping them expand their business—internationally and in North America.”
"Thinking Phone Networks has developed the most robust solution in the UCaaS market and, as a result, has established a world-class list of global enterprise customers and partners,” said Bob Hower, General Partner, Advanced Technology Ventures. “The company is well positioned for significant growth, and this financing is a vote of confidence in the potential of UCaaS, as well as the Thinking Phone Networks team.”
About Thinking Phone Networks
Thinking Phone Networks, named a Gartner, Inc. Magic Quadrant “Leader” and a leading cloud service provider by Infonetics Research, assists midmarket and larger enterprises in deploying cloud UC services quickly, easily, and cost effectively. Our award-winning ThinkingSuite solution combines powerful mobility-enabled and analytics-driven communications services and third-party application integration on an open architected platform. For more information about our market-leading UCaaS solution, visit us at http://www.thinkingphones.com.
About Bessemer Venture Partners
Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) invests in early-stage, hyper-growth startups, partnering closely with entrepreneurs to build durable businesses. BVP is a global firm with offices in Menlo Park, Cambridge, New York, Mumbai, Bangalore, Herzliya and Sao Paolo. With $4 billion under management, BVP invests anywhere from $100,000 to $75 million in innovative companies like LinkedIn, Yelp, Skype, CornerstoneOnDemand, Pinterest, Box and Twilio. Over 100 BVP companies have gone public - last year alone BVP had 5 IPOs, 7 M&A exits, and 20 new investments. Learn more at bvp.com and twitter.com/BessemerVP.
About ATV
Advanced Technology Ventures (ATV) is a bi-coastal venture capital firm with more than $1.6 billion in capital under management. ATV supports entrepreneurial teams in several technology markets, including IT, healthcare and energy, helping to transform emerging growth companies into market leaders. Visit us on the web at http://www.atvcapital.com, or on Twitter at ATVcapital.
David Powers, Thinking Phone Networks, http://www.thinkingphones.com, 617-649-1350, [email protected]
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