Vertical Communications

Vertical Communications, Inc. is a corporation that specializes in cloud and premises-based private branch exchanges, i.e., business telephone systems. Vertical Communications changed its name on January 1, 2005 from Artisoft, Inc. after acquiring Vertical Networks in September 2004. In September 2005, Vertical Communications acquired Comdial. On December 1, 2006, Vodavi Technology was acquired by Vertical Communications.

Vertical Communications, Inc.
TypePublic
OTC Pink: VRCC
IndustryTelecommunications
Founded1982 (1982)
Headquarters
Santa Clara, California
,
United States
Key people
Bill Tauscher (CEO, CFO, Chairman); Peter Bailey, President and COO
ProductsSoftware PBX; business telephone systems; IP-PBX

Products

Vertical offers new telecommunications products, as well as products from legacy product lines including:

  • 8x8
  • MiCloud Flex
  • MiVoice Business
  • MiVoice Office 250
  • MiVoice Office 400
  • iPECS Cloud
  • iPECS Premise
  • Wave IP 500
  • Wave IP 2500
  • SBX IP 320

As of 2018/2019, some of these are sold as refurbished units by equipment brokers.[1][2]

Partner programs

Vertical sells almost exclusively through a value-added reseller (VAR) channel. Partners must meet certain minimum requirements to become a VAR, including purchasing a demo system and qualifying technical personnel by having them attend online training.

Artisoft

Tucson, Arizona-based Artisoft[3] was the first company to offer peer-to-peer networking.[4] The name of its network operating system was LANtastic.

In 1996 the company acquired Stylus Innovation for $12.8 million.[5] Stylus Innovation, noted for its Barcode-based remote shopping product, was founded in 1991 by Krisztina 'Z' Holly, Mike Cassidy and John Barrus.

Stylus Innovation came to public attention by winning the Grand-Prize in the 1991 MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition.

Legacy

Artisoft bought TeleVantage, and renamed the latter Artisoft TeleVantage. However, with Microsoft's Windows for Workgroups "eating into" LANtastic's lead (as was Novell).[6] and then free "bundled networking software" in Windows 95 and 98, the company "saw the handwriting on the wall."[7]

LANtastic's originator, Artisoft Televantage, sold "Legacy" technology ("LANtastic") [7] to Spartacom Technologies in 2000. The latter, which subsequently was acquired by PC Micro, continued to market and maintain LANtastic. Version 8.01, released in 2006, can network PCs running MS-DOS (also PC DOS) 5.0 or later and Windows 3.x up to 7.[8]

Vertical redirect

In September 2004 Artisoft, minus its former LANtastic technology, purchased Vertical and, effective January 2005, renamed itself Vertical Communications Inc.[7]

Vertical now had two non-competing main products, Televantage (for firms with under 1,000 phones and "one or more locations"[7] and Vertical's "own" InstantOffice, "a Voice-over-IP phone system ... for large enterprises with many locations."

References
  1. DX-120: "Vertical Comdial DX-120 (IP-PBX)" (PDF). August 23, 2018.
  2. Refurbished Vertical MP5000 units (as of 2019) continue in the marketplace, sold by equipment brokers. "Refurbished Products - Vertical MP5000 - Hoosier Equipment Brokers".
  3. "Artisoft". The New York Times. June 28, 1994.
  4. "February Answers" (PDF). March 2004. p. 6.
  5. "USC Stevens Institute Names MIT's Krisztina Holly Executive Director". USC. Retrieved 3 August 2013.
  6. "LANtastic fighting two-front war". Computerworld. June 13, 1994. p. 86.
  7. Steve Yates (January 2005). "Artisoft Goes Vertical".
  8. (For case of Windows XP and 7, some limitations apply).
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