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Fuze (formerly known as ThinkingPhones) is a
cloud In meteorology, a cloud is an aerosol consisting of a visible mass of miniature liquid droplets, frozen crystals, or other particles suspended in the atmosphere of a planetary body or similar space. Water or various other chemicals may ...
communications and collaboration software platform designed for the enterprise. Fuze was acquired by
8x8 8x8 Inc. is an American provider of Voice over IP products. Its products include cloud-based voice, contact center, video, mobile and unified communications for businesses. Since 2018, 8x8 manages Jitsi. History The company was founded in 1987 ...
. The company is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.


Products

Fuze's main product combines business voice,
videoconferencing Videotelephony, also known as videoconferencing and video teleconferencing, is the two-way or multipoint reception and transmission of audio and video signals by people in different locations for real time communication.McGraw-Hill Concise Ency ...
, text,
instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and trigge ...
, 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. It runs on a natively-developed platform, and is focused primarily on large enterprise and mid-market customers. 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 Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides customer relationship management (CRM) software and applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, a ...
,
Gmail Gmail is a free email service provided by Google. As of 2019, it had 1.5 billion active users worldwide. A user typically accesses Gmail in a web browser or the official mobile app. Google also supports the use of email clients via the POP and ...
,
Microsoft Teams Microsoft Teams is a proprietary business communication platform developed by Microsoft, as part of the Microsoft 365 family of products. Teams primarily competes with the similar service Slack, offering workspace chat and videoconferencin ...
, and
Zapier Zapier is a product that allows end users to integrate the web applications they use and automate workflows. The company is fully remote. As of 2021, it connects to more than 4,000 apps, with free and paid plans. Overview Zapier provides workflo ...
. The company's
unified communications Unified communications (UC) is a business and marketing concept describing the integration of enterprise communication services such as instant messaging (chat), presence information, voice (including IP telephony), mobility features (including ...
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. In March 2020, Fuze introduced its contact center as a service (CCaaS), which integrates with its unified communications as a service (UCaaS) platform. On May 25, 2020, Fuze announced the launch of the Fuze 6 platform, for an improved user, administrator, and contact center user experience. 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. 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. The company's customers include
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,
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, National Geographic,
AstraZeneca AstraZeneca plc () is a British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company with its headquarters at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus in Cambridge, England. It has a portfolio of products for major diseases in areas includi ...
,
Waste Management Waste management or waste disposal includes the processes and actions required to manage waste from its inception to its final disposal. This includes the collection, transport, treatment and disposal of waste, together with monitorin ...
, Yamaha Corporation of America, and PTC.Ron Miller
"ThinkingPhones Becomes Fuze and Grabs $112 Million Investment Led By Summit Partners,"
TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately $ ...
, February 9, 2016.
Fuze competes with
Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
,
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...
and
Cisco Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...
in offering a combination of phone, videoconferencing, text and related services.


History


Thinking Phone Networks (2006–2016)

Thinking Phone Networks was founded in 2006 by Steven Kokinos and Derek Yoo, as an
enterprise software Enterprise software, also known as enterprise application software (EAS), is computer software used to satisfy the needs of an organization rather than individual users. Such organizations include businesses, schools, interest-based user groups, ...
company. Kokinos was previously a co-founder of BladeLogic, where Yoo was a
product manager A product manager (PM) is a professional role that is responsible for the development of products for an organization, known as the practice of product management. Product managers own the product strategy behind a product (physical or digital), ...
.Galen Moore
"Thinking Phone Networks nabs $1.2M funding,"
''
Boston Business Journal The ''Boston Business Journal'' is a weekly, business-oriented newspaper published in Boston, Massachusetts. It is published by the American City Business Journals. The newspaper was founded by Robert Bergenheim and launched its first issue on ...
'', January 21, 2010.
Thinking Phones' initial focus was unifying voice, text and conferencing services through an Internet-based platform.Alex Konrad
"Why Boston Startup ThinkingPhones Renamed Itself Fuze After Raising $112 Million,"
''
Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...
'', February 9, 2016.
Rebecca Strong
"Cambridge's ThinkingPhones Is on a Tear,"
BostInno BostInno is a local online news site and community publishing platform covering "the view from inside" innovation in Boston. It was founded in 2008 as a community startup blog by Chase Garbarino, CEO and co-founder of Streetwise Media, and Kevin ...
, June 15, 2015.
Originally marketed as a business
VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...
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. In 2010, Thinking Phone Networks launched one of the first mobile business phone applications on the
iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...
store, and later released an Android version of the service. Thinking Phone Networks took its first venture capital in January 2010, a $1.2 million equity financing from Capstone Partners. Following rounds included $16.5 million in October 2012, led by venture capital firms Advanced Technology Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners; $10 million in October 2013 from the same firms; and $56.7 million of funding in December 2014, led by
Technology Crossover Ventures TCMI, Inc. better known by the name TCV (Technology Crossover Ventures) is an American investment firm based in Menlo Park, California. The firm mainly invests in public and private growth-stage companies in the technology industry. Background ...
. 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. The company grew from 200 employees at the beginning of 2015 to over 700 by the end of the year.


Rebranding to Fuze (2016–present)

In November 2015, Thinking Phones acquired San Francisco-based cloud voice and video conferencing company FuzeBox, which was founded in 1998 by Jeff Cavins as CallWave, a
publicly traded company A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) company can be listed on a stock exchange (list ...
. In 2009, it was taken private and renamed FuzeBox. 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. On February 17, 2017, Colin Doherty was announced as CEO of Fuze. Steve Kokinos will oversee corporate strategy as executive chairman. In May 2019, Fuze announced it has raised $484.8 million to date in total funding. 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. 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. Flex Summit 2021 was a five-day virtual event, exploring the future of flexible work. 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. Rob Scudiere was named president and COO. On February 5, 2021, Edward M. Durkin was named chief financial officer, and Dan MacDonnell was named senior security advisor. On April 9, 2021, Christopher Jones was named Fuze's new chief revenue officer. In addition to its headquarters in Boston, the company has locations in New York, Ottawa, London, Aveiro (Portugal), Paris, and Sydney.


Patents and awards

Fuze has been ranked on the
Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...
Cloud 100 list every year since 2016. The company was ranked #290 on
Deloitte Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (), commonly referred to as Deloitte, is an international professional services network headquartered in London, England. Deloitte is the largest professional services network by revenue and number of professio ...
's 2018 Technology Fast 500, among the fastest growing technology companies in North America. 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. 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; patent number 10469626B2, for advanced address book management; patent number 10798191B1, for processing and analyzing streams of communications data in real time, across multiple users and mediums; patent number 10834147 for controlling communication devices when using a web-based unified communications platform; and patent number 10877980 for mapping communication content across telephony, video, or chat, to create user knowledge scores, to determine user expertise. 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.


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. 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. 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 Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...
,
Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
,
LinkedIn LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented online service that operates via websites and mobile apps. Launched on May 5, 2003, the platform is primarily used for professional networking and career development, and allows job se ...
,
Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
and
Yelp Yelp Inc. is an American company that develops the Yelp.com website and the Yelp mobile app, which publish crowd-sourced reviews about businesses. It also operates Yelp Guest Manager, a table reservation service. It is headquartered in San F ...
.


Partnerships

In March 2019, Fuze announced a partnership with
Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...
to provide mobile unified communications as a service for remote and distributed workers. 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. Fuze integrates with Google Meet,
Zoom Zoom may refer to: Technology Computing * Zoom (software), videoconferencing application * Page zooming, the ability to magnify or shrink a portion of a page on a computer display * Zooming user interface, a graphical interface allowing for image ...
,
Webex Webex by Cisco is an American company that develops and sells web conferencing, videoconferencing and contact center as a service applications. It was founded as WebEx in 1995 and taken over by Cisco Systems in 2007. Its headquarters are in San ...
,
Microsoft Teams Microsoft Teams is a proprietary business communication platform developed by Microsoft, as part of the Microsoft 365 family of products. Teams primarily competes with the similar service Slack, offering workspace chat and videoconferencin ...
, and
GoToMeeting GoTo Meeting (formerly GoToMeeting) is a web conferencing software by GoTo. It is an online meeting, desktop sharing, and video conferencing software package that enables the user to meet with other computer users, customers, clients, or colle ...
, to launch and join videoconferences seamlessly. 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.


See also

* Private branch exchange *
Unified communications Unified communications (UC) is a business and marketing concept describing the integration of enterprise communication services such as instant messaging (chat), presence information, voice (including IP telephony), mobility features (including ...
*
Unified messaging Unified messaging (or UM) is a business term for the integration of different electronic messaging and communications media ( e-mail, SMS, fax, voicemail, video messaging, etc.) technologies into a single interface, accessible from a variety of ...
*
Video conferencing Videotelephony, also known as videoconferencing and video teleconferencing, is the two-way or multipoint reception and transmission of audio signal, audio and video signals by people in different locations for Real-time, real time communication. ...


References


External links

* {{Official website, http://www.8x8.com/fuze Unified communications Teleconferencing Videotelephony Telecommunications companies of the United States