Source: Parlano
Parlano Inc., a leading provider of persistent group messaging, enterprise instant messaging and presence management solutions, today announced record customer and revenue growth for FY2005 as well as significant investment in products and organizational reach.
"We are extremely pleased with the progress we have made over the past year," said Parlano Chairman and CEO, Nick Fera. "With adoption of persistent group messaging growing at an accelerated rate, we are excited to enter 2006 with new products and partnerships that will help Parlano continue to grow market share in financial services and beyond."
Highlights of 2005 include:
Revenue and Customer Growth
- Increased customer base by over 70%, including multiple new customers outside core strength in financial services
- Delivered record revenue and continued the trend of strong year-over-year revenue growth since founding in 1999
Product Advancement
- Received patent protection for critical capabilities of persistent group messaging
- Announced a relationship with AOL to provide customers direct access to the AOL IM community, as well as federated access to other IM products through AOL's clearinghouse capabilities
- Launched significant new product functionality with MindAlign and MindAlign for Microsoft Live Communications Server, including enhanced federation capabilities to all major IM networks (AOL, Yahoo and MSN), making Parlano the only vendor with group messaging and federated access to the three major public IM networks, all from a single, unified collaboration environment
- Expanded go-to-market relationship with Microsoft through numerous joint marketing activities and further product integration with Live Communications Server, Microsoft Active Directory and Microsoft Office Share Point Portal Server
Organizational Growth
- Strengthened management team with appointments of industry veterans Jay McGlynn as senior vice president of worldwide sales and Jeff Schultz as senior vice president of worldwide marketing
- Opened new sales and support offices in New York and London and added a Federal sales and support team in Washington D.C.
- Announced a reseller agreement with IPC, the leading vendor of trading floor communications solutions for the global financial services industry
- Formalized a partnership with Formicary, a solution provider in the UK and North America with years of experience deploying MindAlign and integrating it with internal and external information systems
Market Maturity
- Expanded the market for persistent group messaging beyond financial service into markets such as utilities/energy (energy and emissions trading), high technology (sales management, customer support, and product development), professional services (communities of interest and client engagement management), and defense/security (information sharing and command and control)
- Validated Parlano's strategy to work with major partners to deploy SIP/SIMPLE-based collaboration solutions as SIP/SIMPLE became the widely-accepted standard for enterprise-class, unified communications vendors and experienced widespread market adoption, especially within financial services
- Validated Parlano's early vision for connecting internal and external communities with enterprise-class collaboration systems that securely federate to public and private networks, as opposed to relying on limited subscription-based communities or numerous public-IM services, as Parlano and other vendors delivered the necessary infrastructure to support secure federation and is experiencing broad customer and market acceptance