Leader in unified communications

Fonality is a leader in unified communications and contact center solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. Used by over 5,000 companies and 100,000 end users in 100 countries, Fonality's award winning IP-PBX VoIP phone systems have connected more than 175,000,000 mission critical phone calls. The PBXtra and trixbox Pro product lines are based on Fonality's patent-pending Anywhere Management^® hybrid-hosted architecture, plus an improved version of the popular open source Asterisk code base that has been modified to add reliability, stability and enterprise-class features and delivers the advanced capabilities of an enterprise-class phone system for 40 to 80 percent less than traditional offerings.

The Story of Fonality

Fonality was founded in 2003 as a residential VoIP provider by serial entrepreneur and SMB expert, Chris Lyman. Within months, Lyman and his team of four people needed to purchase a PBX phone system for their new office. After shopping around and receiving a $15,000 bid for a phone system for five employees, Lyman went to his team and said "we're in the wrong business." Fonality immediately shifted gears from residential VoIP to business telephony and built version 1.0 of PBXtra.

Lyman's vision for Fonality was to change the phone market by creating the world's first truly affordable enterprise-class phone system for SMBs. Also wanting to leverage his expertise in making technology easy to use, he designed PBXtra to be "as easy to use as Hotmail." That way, business owners and managers could manage and administer their own phone systems and eliminate the expense of having to call the "phone guy" every time they needed to make a change to their phone systems.

Fonality stormed into the SMB IP-PBX market fueled by leveraging an investment from a small group of angel investors. In 2006, the company received its first round of venture capital from Azure Capital, which Fonality used to expand its management team and continue product development. Fonality has demonstrated significant business success - growing at a monthly rate of ten percent on average, achieving profitability in 2006 and increasing call volumes at a rate of 400 percent per year for the past three years. As a result of these successes, in early 2007, Fonality secured additional funding from Intel Capital. In 2008, Fonality announced a partnership with Dell, Inc. where Dell will sell Fonality VoIP Phone systems to their small and medium business customers.

Company Timeline

• Dec 2003 – Fonality founded
• Feb 2004 – Fonality shops for PBX, realizes it's in the wrong business
• Oct 2004 – PBXtra Standard Edition Ships
• Mar 2005 – PBXtra Call Center Edition Ships
• Jul 2005 – Fonality Customers Place 4 Million Calls
• Sep 2005 – Fonality Named to 2005 "pulver 100"
• Jan 2006 – Fonality Secures Financing from Azure Capital
• Mar 2006 – Business 2.0 Names Fonality Top 25 Start Up
• May 2006 – 20 Million Calls and 10,000 Fonality Users
• Jun 2006 – PBXtra Wins Internet Telephony Editor's Choice Award
• Jun 2006 – Fonality Introduces HUD
• Sep 2006 – Network Computing Names PBXtra Best IP-PBX for SMBs
• Oct 2006 – Fonality Acquires trixbox
• Nov 2006 – Fonality Customers Place 50 Million Calls
• Feb 2007 – Fonality Secures Financing from Intel Capital
• Mar 2007 – Fonality Named to 2007 'Pulver 100'
• Apr 2007 – Fonality Customers place 75 Million Calls
• May 2007 – PBXtra Named TMCnet Product of the Year 2006
• Jul 2007 – PBXtra Wins PC Mag Editors' Choice Award
• Aug 2007 – Fonality Introduces trixbox Pro
• Sep 2007 – Fonality Acquires Insightful Solutions
• Jan 2008 – Fonality selected as Dell’s VoIP partner
• Feb 2008 – Dell begins selling Fonality VoIP Systems