Unified Communications Featured Article

Gladstone Capital Invests in Unified Communications

By Andrew Bindelglass
Contributing Writer

Earlier this week, the Gladstone Capital Corporation completed an investment in unified communications technology. The venture capital firm has finished a senior secured debt investment of 29 million dollars in support of the merger of NetFortis and Fonality (News - Alert), two unified communications companies that are within the Spire Capital portfolio.

This investment was mainly spurred by the merger of these two companies, as rumblings of this move were what attracted the attention of Gladstone Capital. NetFortis and Fonality coming together allows them to combine their work and collaborate on making cloud-based communications more efficient and reliable. Both of these companies have developed their own new technologies with respect to the cloud, and the ability to combine them and work together to develop new ones could yield tantalizing possibilities.

“Spire Capital is a proven financial sponsor devoted to operational excellence and we are excited to partner with them on this important transaction. The merger of NetFortris and Fonality establishes a unique combination of service capabilities, proprietary technology and management talent,” said Mike McQuigg, a Managing Director of Gladstone Capital.

This new infusion of cash from Gladstone Capital will also give the two companies even more flexibility to innovate. As two relatively small providers of cloud based communication, NetFortis and Fonality are constantly looking to add new features in order to compete with larger communications providers. At the same time, they will also be looking to continue to fine tune their underlying intellectual property to continue to build up speed and reliability of their services.

The fact that Gladstone Capital Corporation was willing to sink so much capital into the merger of these two companies is another example of the immense growth that unified cloud based communications is experiencing. The versatility and lack of need for hardware that the cloud provides gives it a much higher potential range of use at a fraction of the cost. It seems more and more like cloud based unified communications are the future, and as companies work to improve the security and reliability of their platforms, the use of cloud based communications will only grow more prevalent.