Knowing the news and sharing the news is always a challenge for me, especially when the company involved is a client. For close to two weeks I've been in the know about XConnect's founder and CEO Eli Katz successful closing of their Series B round, but my lips were sealed and my fingers tapped together.
In this economy, raising a Series B is huge endorsement. When the funds come for the most part from existing investors, it's more than an endorsement, it's a major proof point that the company is hitting stride and on plan. In the case of XConnect, knowing as an insider what they are up to makes this is really the case.
When you look at the overall voice space, registry, peering and applications are the core sectors. It's no longer a hardware game, as evidenced by the recent acquisition of SimulScribe by DiTech for seven million today and the prospect of ten million more in the future. Where the voice world is headed is services, (some would say it's there now) so the key roles that xConnect, like another client, VoxBone play, is in the middle of it all, with the type of technology assets that one likes to have as an investor. The company earns money when you're sleeping.
xConnect has been winning business in the voice federation sector, and that's a huge market. But it was their most recent win with the GSMA (the folks that basically run mobile telephony around the globe) to be the services company that enables interoperability between XConnect’s ENUM Registry Services and the GSMA’s PathFinder™ number translation service operated by Neustar.
Given how the world is going from landline to mobile, that win alone is a feather in Eli and John Wilkinson's cap that clearly shows the industry why they are the go to source, not only within the ground based IP comms world, but are a significant player in mobile too. As Eli Katz pointed out when the news about the GSMA announcement became public, he reiterated that the GSMA relationship is all about "registry interoperability – and through that, universal routing of IP-based services."
Today's news about the $10 million dollar raise, given the economy, and the way that it has been of late, is a big endorsement for a company that you may know is touching your call, but really is making that call possible.
Congratulations to a very good group of well deserving technology executives who deserve all that they are going achieve.
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