Irwin Lazar from Nermertes Research came up with a cool round up of top trends in the unified communication space. A couple of them certainly rang true from the vantage point of the FierceVoIP news desk.

I won't spoil the whole article here, but I thought Lazar's first and third pick were right on. ROI certainly is king in this industry, and if a company is going to make the move to a powerful UC deployment, they are going to have to be convinced that their investment will pay off. Cost savings from UC is one of the main draws, so look for those offering SIP Trunking to benefit from the ROI focus of buyers.

Lazar also brings up social networking as a trend in UC. Having seen some UC applications both pull Twitter feeds into the main application as well as provide keyword search for company feedback, I can see the strength of including social networks into the UC deployment. For help desks, call centers and customer service reps who can monitor Twitter, Facebook and Yelp for positive and negative feedback directed at their brand, they will be able to respond much quicker to rectify situations and hopefully help their companies keep customers happy.

For more of the top trends:
- Check out the article here

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Vopium, a Danish smartphone-targeting mobile VoIP company, just received an influx of cash from an investor. Raghuvinder Kataria, a telecommunications investor from India who is a major investor in Bharti Airtel, has invested $16.5 million in the company and now owns the majority stake of Vopium.

Vopium provides software for smartphones that allows users to make very cheap calls harnessing VoIP technology. The company boasts calls from Denmark to the US for only $0.02 per minute and claims to provide the same quality as traditional phone companies. According to the release, one million smartphone users have installed Vopium on their mobile phones and at least 250,000 customers in 49 countries are currently using the solution. Their biggest markets are currently Scandinavia, the UK and Australia.

With the new investment, Vopium hopes to expand its international business further and to position itself as an alternative to Skype. "The capital increase should primarily secure the ongoing growth globally," said Vopium's CEO Tanveer Sharif in a release.

For more:
- read the release

Related news:
Vopium joins the me-too iPhone VoIP app club
Vopium to Provide Mobile VoIP and Messaging Platform to Convergia

Vopium's economic foundation is now secured so that the company can keep expanding internationally. The Indian investor, Raghuvinder Kataria, has with his own investment company invested $16.5 million in the Danish company and he now owns the majority of the shares in Vopium.

Vopium was established in Copenhagen by a group of people spearheaded by Tanveer Sharif. It was originally intended for immigrants who were looking for cheap telephony solutions to get in contact with family and friends in distant countries. This target group has since been expanded to all people and companies who want to make cheap international phone calls. With a software program installed on their mobile phone, users can make very cheap calls, e.g. from Denmark to the US for only $ 0,02 per minute, and with the same quality as that provided by traditional phone companies. One million users have already installed Vopium on their mobile phone and 250,000 users in 49 countries are using the solution.

With Vopium, the users do not have to change their phone company or be located at the computer to save on expensive phone calls. Besides international calls and texts, Vopium offers its users free calls to each other and the ability to communicate with friends on Skype, GTalk, MSN, Twitter, Facebook, etc, directly from their mobile phone.

Raghuvinder Kataria was one of the early investors in Bharti Tele-Ventures, together with Sunil Bharti Mittal. Today the company is called Bharti Airtel and is one of the world's largest mobile companies.

Voxeo Corporation announces a $9 million minority investment by North Atlantic Capital and the Florida Growth Fund. Voxeo will use the funds to take advantage of rapidly growing opportunities in Unlocked Communications, including VoIP platforms, Interactive Voice Response, text and instant messaging, and unified communications, both by accelerating internal development and through corporate acquisitions. Voxeo has acquired three companies over the last 14 months.

This is the first investment made by the Florida Growth Fund, a $250 million partnership between the State Board of Administration of Florida and Hamilton Lane. Hamilton Lane is one of the leading private equity asset managers worldwide, with over $88 billion under management and supervision. The Florida Growth Fund was created in 2009 as a result of the passage of Florida State Bill 2310 with the goal of investing in technology and growth-based businesses in the State of Florida.

North Atlantic Capital is a venture capital firm dedicated to helping strong teams accelerate the growth of their expansion-stage, technology-based companies. North Atlantic Capital found and identified Voxeo as a high quality investment opportunity in 2007 and in addition to leading the investment, introduced Voxeo and the Florida Growth Fund. Concurrent with the investment, Mark Morrissette, Managing Director of North Atlantic Capital, has joined Voxeo’s board of directors.

Voxeo is an employee-owned company with headquarters in Orlando, Florida and offices in Beijing, Cologne, London and Silicon Valley. In 2009, Voxeo was named one of the 100 best places to work in Florida. Voxeo's offerings include:

• Prophecy Interactive Voice Response and Unified Self Service platform helps enterprises and service providers automate their most common customer and employee interactions via phone, SMS, IM, Twitter, mobile web and more.
• VoiceObjects Application Server helps enterprises and service providers design, create, deploy, manage, and analyze personalized self-service applications.
• Micromethod VoIP platforms and solutions help enterprises and service providers deploy highly-scalable, customizable infrastructure for VoIP solutions.
• IMified technology delivers a web service that enables applications to interact with any text messaging network, including SMS, IM, Twitter, Facebook, and more.

All of Voxeo's products and services are available as both an on-premise, traditional software license and as on-demand, hosted, Software as a Service solutions.

T-Mobile has confirmed that it is to end its ban on mobile VoIP applications within its German network - but will charge customers upwards of EURO € 9.95 per month for the service.
The operator justified the surcharge by explaining that billions of euros invested by operators in the roll-out of networks in recent years were based on rate costings with income from voice telephony and mobile data.

Jajah has secured USD $2.75 million from an anticipated USD $5 million fourth round of funding.
Launched three years ago, the VoIP communication service has grown steadily and now provide a service to millions of users.