CosmoCom Inc.,
developer of technology that lets companies service
customers efficiently using combined Internet and
telephone contact centers, is expected to announce today
that it has received $40 million in investment capital
from a blue-chip trio of tech and venture capital firms.
CosmoCom, which employs 112 at its headquarters in
Melville and 32 other people worldwide, said it will use
the money to expand its worldwide workforce to more than
400 by the end of next year and to explore possible
acquisitions.
The company, formed by several former top executives
of Woodbury-based Comverse Technology Inc., is expected
to begin serious consideration of an initial public
offering as early as next year, analysts said.
Leading the trio of investors in this round of
financing are Technology Crossover Ventures, a highly
regarded Silicon Valley venture capital firm, Intel
Corp., the world's leading maker of microprocessors, and
Marconi, a British telecom giant. The $40 million, which
also includes new cash from the original investors, is
nearly double all previous outside investment in
CosmoCom, which amounted to $23 million.
"The growth of the company and the levels of
financing it has been able to accomplish clearly set it
apart," said Jeffrey Bass, chairman of Long Island
Venture Group and a partner at accounting firm Margolin
Winer Evens LLP in Garden City. He said the $40 million
is perhaps the largest venture capital infusion ever for
a Long Island company at CosmoCom's stage of
development.
Ari Sonesh, CosmoCom's president and chief executive,
said most of the employees the company expects to hire
within the next year would work at the Long Island
headquarters. Additional staffing will come in sales and
marketing facilities across the country and around the
world, he said.
CosmoCom is said to control the lion's share of the
emerging market for unified contact centers using
Internet Protocol telephony, which allows companies to
better service customers by efficiently routing incoming
calls and Internet-based messages to the staff best
suited to handle them, regardless of location. Calls can
be directed to service reps via the Internet or
intranet, reducing the need for manual forwarding and
cutting long-distance costs.
Sonesh said the $12-billion market could reach $25
billion within a decade.
"There are many players out there tinkering in this
business, some that let you manage e-mail or fax, or
voice alone, but CosmoCom ties all these channels
together closely and makes managing it a much simpler
operation," said Ken Landoline, analyst at the Robert
Frances Group in Connecticut.
CosmoCom was founded by Sonesh and Stephen Kowarsky
in 1995, and received its first outside investment, $1
million, from the Long Island Venture Fund in 1997.
Other investments followed and the company already has
eight quarters of revenue growth under its belt, though
Sonesh declined to release a figure. The company could
be profitable next year, he said.
