| [September 18, 2000]
CosmoCom Secures $40 Million In
Private Equity Round
CosmoCom, Inc.
a leader in Internet Protocol (IP) contact center
technology, announced that the company has closed a
round of $40 million in additional private equity
financing. First-time investors include the Intel
Communications Fund; Marconi Ventures, the corporate
venture fund of Marconi plc (LONDON: MNI); and
Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV), with most of
CosmoCom’s previous investors completing the round.
This round of funding will help enable the company to
position its technology and market leadership in
next-generation, pure IP contact center platforms
through continued rapid growth in its own development,
sales, and marketing resources, and through potential
acquisitions of related technology and established
market presence.
"CosmoCom is turning the PC into a complete
multimedia communications tool for e-business, enabling
applications such as pure IP-based contact centers,"
said John Hull, director of the Intel Communications
Fund. "Intel made this investment in part to promote the
use of PCs as the primary communications device in
commercial grade telephony applications. In addition,
CosmoCom's solution takes advantage of Intel's Dialogic
converged communication hardware and software."
Marconi, a global supplier of advanced communications
solutions, was a partner prior to the investment by
Marconi Ventures, having closed a Value Added Reseller
agreement with CosmoCom earlier this year. "Marconi and
CosmoCom share a vision of the rapidly converging worlds
of telephony and multimedia services for intelligent
broadband networks," commented Joe Pajer, executive vice
president and general manager of Marconi’s Routing &
Switching Products division. "Our financial support is
indicative of our excitement at integrating CosmoCom’s
CosmoCall Universe multimedia Internet Protocol (IP)
contact center with Marconi’s Intelligent Packet
Networks (IPN) solutions."
TCV has been at the forefront in IP-centric
investing, Wwith a portfolio that includes such publicly
traded companies as Amdocs (NYSE:DOX), Copper Mountain
(NASDAQ:CMTN),IBasis (NASDAQ:IBAS) and eLoyalty
(Nasdaq:ELOY), and emerging private companies such as
Cosine Communications, Ceon Corporation and XACCT
Technologies., TCV has been at the forefront in
IP-centric investing. "We are delighted to have been
chosen by CosmoCom to lead their current round," said
Rick Kimball, a founding General Partner of TCV and new
CosmoCom board member. and to have the opportunity to
back their "With CEO Ari Sonesh at the helm and their
world-class management team, he has assembled," said
Rick Kimball, a founding General Partner of TCV and new
CosmoCom board member. "The contact center marketplace
is desperate for flexible and open next generation
solutions. Our research indicates that the CosmoCom’s
contact center platform is well-ahead of both legacy and
newer competitors."
"This cash infusion will help us maintain the
technology and market lead we have achieved," explained
Ari Sonesh, CosmoCom’s President and CEO, regarding the
timing of the round. "It also increases our freedom in
the timing of our IPO, which we see as a positive value
in today’s market climate. We will be using these funds
to continue executing our ambitious business plan for
global leadership in the next generation of Customer
Interaction Management systems -- the pure IP-based,
unified contact center exemplified by CosmoCall
Universe."
"Funding by such a prestigious group of investors
speaks extremely well for CosmoCom’s future prospects,"
expressed Ken Landoline, Vice President and Director of
Telecom Research for the Robert Frances Group. "We see
tremendous potential in what CosmoCom is doing to
revolutionize call center technology."
[ Back To BizWatch
Homepage ] |
