Fuze (company)

Fuze (formerly known as ThinkingPhones) is a cloud communications and collaboration software platform designed for the enterprise. Fuze was acquired by 8x8. The company is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.

This article is about a communications company. For other uses, see Fuze (disambiguation).
Fuze, Inc.
TypePrivate
IndustryUnified Communications as a Service (UCaaS)
Founded2006
FoundersSteven Kokinos
Derek Yoo
Headquarters
Boston, MA
,
USA
Number of locations
21
Key people
Brian Day (CEO)
Edward M. Durkin (CFO)
Chris Jones (CRO)
Elisa Gilmartin (CPO)
Rob Scudiere (COO)
Chris Conry (CIO)
David Donatelli (SVP)
Eric Hanson (CMO)
ProductsVoice calling, audio and video conferencing, chat, and analytics
Number of employees
600 (June 2021)[1][2]
Websitefuze.com

Products

Fuze's main product combines business voice, videoconferencing, text, instant messaging, content sharing, and collaboration apps under a single cloud service to deliver both traditional phone systems and mobile devices a seamless transition between communication methods.[3][4][5] It runs on a natively-developed platform, and is focused primarily on large enterprise and mid-market customers.[6] The company also provides analytics and real-time intelligence, with an expanded version of caller ID that pulls information from a caller's online profiles to provide more information on the caller. Mobile enhancements to Fuze offer mobile workers more flexibility and control, while maintaining the full capabilities of the Fuze platform. The products can integrate with existing enterprise software services, such as Slack, Salesforce, Gmail, Microsoft Teams, and Zapier.[7][8][9]

The company's unified communications and collaboration (UCC) services include Fuze Pro, a subscription cloud-based service for voice calling and collaboration. It offers unlimited outbound calls in one country, integrated email and voicemail, group chat, Fuze Meetings for up to 1,000 participants, APIs, usage reports, analytics, and integration with Salesforce. Other UCC offerings include Fuze Calling and Fuze Success Plans, which are collections of services and resources to teach customers best practices in the UCaaS field.[10][11]

In March 2020, Fuze introduced its contact center as a service (CCaaS), which integrates with its unified communications as a service (UCaaS) platform.[12] On May 25, 2020, Fuze announced the launch of the Fuze 6 platform, for an improved user, administrator, and contact center user experience.[13] In February 2021, Fuze announced Fuze for Manufacturing, an offering that adds targeted supply chain, distribution and logistics, employee capabilities, and integrations with applications commonly used by manufacturing companies to its typical offerings.[14] In June 2021, Fuze announced the standalone Fuze Contact Center, for enterprise companies requiring a contact center for their customers, providing contact center features such as call routing and queuing.[15]

The company's customers include Associated Press, PGA Tour, National Geographic, AstraZeneca, Waste Management, Yamaha Corporation of America, and PTC.[16][7][17][18] Fuze competes with Google, Microsoft and Cisco in offering a combination of phone, videoconferencing, text and related services.[7]

History

Thinking Phone Networks (2006–2016)

Thinking Phone Networks was founded in 2006 by Steven Kokinos and Derek Yoo, as an enterprise software company.[7] Kokinos was previously a co-founder of BladeLogic, where Yoo was a product manager.[19] Thinking Phones' initial focus was unifying voice, text and conferencing services through an Internet-based platform.[20][21] Originally marketed as a business VoIP or hosted PBX replacement service for mid-market and enterprise customers, the company expanded its services to provide messaging, presence, video services, collaboration and analytics within the unified communications industry.[19] In 2010, Thinking Phone Networks launched one of the first mobile business phone applications on the iOS store, and later released an Android version of the service.[21]

Thinking Phone Networks took its first venture capital in January 2010, a $1.2 million equity financing from Capstone Partners.[19] Following rounds included $16.5 million in October 2012, led by venture capital firms Advanced Technology Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners;[17] $10 million in October 2013 from the same firms;[22] and $56.7 million of funding in December 2014, led by Technology Crossover Ventures.[23] In 2016, after raising a new round of $112 million in private financing from Summit Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and Technology Crossover Ventures, the company brought its total fundraising to over $200 million since its founding.[20]

The company grew from 200 employees at the beginning of 2015 to over 700 by the end of the year.[16]

Rebranding to Fuze (2016–present)

In November 2015, Thinking Phones acquired San Francisco-based cloud voice and video conferencing company FuzeBox,[7][20] which was founded in 1998 by Jeff Cavins as CallWave, a publicly traded company. In 2009, it was taken private and renamed FuzeBox.[24][25]

On February 9, 2016, Thinking Phones announced that it had rebranded itself as Fuze. The name change was intended to indicate that the company had moved beyond exclusively phone-related offerings and to better reflect its core offerings, as a unified platform for voice, video, and collaboration.[16][26]

On February 17, 2017, Colin Doherty was announced as CEO of Fuze. Steve Kokinos will oversee corporate strategy as executive chairman.[27]

In May 2019, Fuze announced it has raised $484.8 million to date in total funding.[28] On January 21, 2021, the company announced it had raised an additional $13.6 million from existing investors, including Bessemer Venture Partners and Summit Partners.[29]

On June 5, 2019, Fuze launched Flex Summit, a one-day industry event bringing together experts in technology, HR, operations, and management to explore the future of distributed work.[30] Flex Summit 2021 was a five-day virtual event, exploring the future of flexible work.[31]

On December 11, 2019, Brian Day was named the company's new chief executive officer. He originally joined the company in December 2016 as chief financial officer.[32] Rob Scudiere was named president and COO.[32] On February 5, 2021, Edward M. Durkin was named chief financial officer, and Dan MacDonnell was named senior security advisor.[33] On April 9, 2021, Christopher Jones was named Fuze's new chief revenue officer.[34]

In addition to its headquarters in Boston, the company has locations in New York, Ottawa, London, Aveiro (Portugal), Paris, and Sydney.[35]

Patents and awards

Fuze has been ranked on the Forbes Cloud 100 list every year since 2016.[36][2] The company was ranked #290 on Deloitte's 2018 Technology Fast 500, among the fastest growing technology companies in North America.[37]

Fuze was awarded U.S. Patent No. 10,097,612 in March 2019. This patent, entitled “Selecting Routes Through a Network,” includes the ability to identify a fault location on a segment of the network, enabling Fuze to identify network problems before they cause issues for users, on both a private or public Wi-Fi network. Fuze was awarded U.S. Patent No. 10,191,951 in July 2019 to enable an advanced machine learning algorithm that applies the technology of skills-based routing to internal employee groups.[38] In 2020, Fuze was awarded a new US patent (10298752B1) for unified communication systems, to route inbound communication requests based on the user's recorded history;[39] patent number 10469626B2, for advanced address book management;[40] patent number 10798191B1, for processing and analyzing streams of communications data in real time, across multiple users and mediums;[41] patent number 10834147 for controlling communication devices when using a web-based unified communications platform;[42] and patent number 10877980 for mapping communication content across telephony, video, or chat, to create user knowledge scores, to determine user expertise.[43] On January 26, 2021, Fuze was issued a new US patent (number 10904311) to improve audio and video call quality through machine learning techniques to predict and resolve connectivity issues.[44]

Acquisitions

Starting in 2014, ThinkingPhones began acquiring companies with a purpose of building a full communications stack in the cloud, to provide messaging, phone and video services, along with caller data.[16]

In August 2014, the company acquired Whaleback Managed Services, a provider of cloud-based phone services for medium-sized businesses, re-launching Whaleback's brand name to ThinkingPhones that year.[45][46]

In February 2015, ThinkingPhones acquired Contactive, which provides contact information from a caller, connecting profiles and identities created by people and businesses online and associating them with a telephone number to create an identity graph. Contactive gathers information from sources including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google and Yelp.[16][47]

Partnerships

In March 2019, Fuze announced a partnership with Samsung to provide mobile unified communications as a service for remote and distributed workers.[48]

In September 2019, Fuze announced an integration with Slack, enabling users to seamlessly toggle between the two platforms when moving from a Slack conversation to a Fuze call or meeting.[8] Fuze integrates with Google Meet, Zoom, Webex, Microsoft Teams, and GoToMeeting, to launch and join videoconferences seamlessly.[49]

In March 2021, Fuze announced a partnership with privacy and security company Theta Lake, to assist companies in protecting sensitive data when collaborating. Fuze also updated its Microsoft Teams and Slack integrations to a higher level of security.[50]

See also

References
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  5. Beth Schultz, "ThinkingPhones Takes on Fuze Identity," No Jitter, February 10, 2016.
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