Infratel says its Parallels integration makes it easier for Parallels partners to deploy its SMB telephony tools.
Internet telephony solutions provider Infratel announced this week at the Parallels Summit in Las Vegas that it has extended its partnership with Parallels, integrating its MightyCall platform with the complete suite of Parallels hosting and cloud platform solutions, including the Plesk control panel, and the Parallels Automation solutions.
The integration, says Infratel, make it easy for Parallels hosting partners running services on Parallels solutions to integrate the MightyCall small business telephony products into their systems and offer the product to customers through their existing billing and provisioning systems.
Infratel’s MightyCall is a small business telephony product that provides users with communications tools in a couple of configurations. The company’s ClickConnect product provides a click-to-call function on a small business website – a simple but pretty powerful “contact us” experience. Its MightyCall receptionist is a more fully-featured virtual phone system, offering a virtual switchboard with toll-free numbers and a range of call forwarding and auto attendant features.
Infratel is one of the portfolio companies of Runa Capital, the venture capital firm started by a group that includes Parallels founder Serguei Beloussov, and is pretty representative of the sort of company Runa tends to target, and is a good fit for the ecosystem and channel of hosters and other service providers that Parallels supports.
Infratel announced its funding from Runa Capital back in August of 2012.
For hosting providers serving small businesses, Infratel is working to position itself as a great value-add, an affordable add-on that meets a very specific business need. Hosts can incorporate the solution into their services without a lot of up-front investment, and generate revenue based on a revenue share partnership with Infratel.
“Eighty percent of consumers judge the validity of a small business based on the professionalism of their phone system,” says Bryan Goode, CEO of Infratel, quoted in the press release. “By working with the Parallels team, we’ve simplified integration across the Parallels product line to help their ecosystem of partners seamlessly offer business phone services with minimal integration effort.”
Talk back: Do you offer customers a telephony service? Do you see a demand for a service like Infratel among small business customers? Does the integration with Parallels make you more likely to look into Infratel? Let us know in the comments.
About Liam Eagle
Liam Eagle has worked as a contributor to the Web Host Industry Review since its inception in 2000, and as editor since 2003. He has been editor of the WHIR's print magazine since its launch. His daily involvement in the gathering and reporting of Web hosting news and his regular interaction with Web hosting leaders gives him an uncommonly broad appreciation of the issues and tends facing the business. Through his WHIR blog, Liam spots Web hosting trends and offers opinions on the industry-wide impacts of major developments and the motivation behind big announcements. Follow him on Twitter @liameagle
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Great work by the guys at Infratel! We recently did the Parallels Automation integration for our hosted PBX solution as well, and find great interest from hosters and cloud aggregators alike. Voice is a logical part of any cloud portfolio, and it’s good to see different flavors emerge!
Rob