VCs Fund VOSS UC Vision

Getting in under the wire of the latest financial crisis, VOSS, aka VisionOSS, parlayed its service delivery expertise and momentum in Unified Communications into a $12 million Series B funding round this week.

Eden Ventures, XAnge Private Equity and early investor Pyrford Enterprises supplied the new funding to the Berkshire, UK-based software vendor. Bolstered by its partnerships with IBM and Cisco Systems, as well as its Tier 1 service provider deployments, including one at BT, VOSS plans to expand its presence in both North America and the Middle East.

As good as the company’s timing was in getting its funding round closed in early August, the timing of bringing a hosted platform to market now may be just as good.

“In disturbed markets like this, people tend to look at cost savings by outsourcing to people who can do things cheaper and that trend is already happening quite aggressively,” said Mike Frayne, CEO of VisionOSS.

Frayne added that even beyond the outsourced, or hosted model, his platform provided timely cost savings simply through the automation it provides.

VOSS has stuck with its Unified Communications (UC) services and systems integration approach and it is paying off. Frayne said there aren’t a lot of software vendors addressing service delivery in the UC space, so his company has been able to get out in front of the market. “And with this funding we hope to keep it that way,” he said.

Its VOSS-USM is an automated UC service delivery and management platform, designed specifically to address the challenges involved in deploying and managing managed-IP Telephony and UC solutions. The company says the difference in its platform is its ability to integrate the delivery and management of UC applications with the automation of network infrastructure configuration.

Unified Communications is seeing resurgence, according to Forrester Research. The analyst firm reports that 50 percent of the large enterprise market is evaluating or piloting UC solutions for their organizations. And IDC estimates the size of the worldwide UC market will reach $17 billion by 2011.

Investors see sustainability in VOSS’ business model and innovation in its product. Cyril Bertrand of XAnge Private Equity said he was impressed by VOSS’ blue-chip global customers and its rich suite of service delivery tools, which he called a “new category of UC service delivery platform.”

VOSS provides both service delivery and management platforms for pure IP and hybrid networks that deliver UC. It provides management of the UC infrastructure, devices, services, users, analysis and reporting to users in a single platform.

In addition to expanding its presence in new markets, VOSS will use some of the funding for product development. “There are so many UC features now that picking the right ones and being able to manage them in the right way is very important to us,” Frayne said.