JAJAH, the IP communications company, is working with Microsoft to provide SIP Trunking services to Microsoft enterprise customers globally. According to the firm this will allow companies to make high quality voice calls over JAJAH's IP Platform in the cloud, without requiring an infrastructure upgrade.

JAJAH CEO Trevor Healy talks to voip.biz-news about the "sea change" currently taking place in the communications industry - and explains how that has resulted in JAJAH itself evolving from a consumer VoIP focus to become a global IP communications platform provider.

Growing VoIP service provider Jajah has taken in $2.75 million so far of an anticipated $5 million fourth round of private funding, say reports. Investors in the most recent round have not yet been disclosed; previously, Jajah raised $23 million from Globespan Capital Partners, Intel Capital, Deutsche Telekom and Sequoia Capital.

Over the past three years, Jajah broke away from the me-too mobile web VoIP play of free client-to-client calls and oh-so-cheap international rates. The Silicon Valley-based company moved into providing VoIP back-end operations a year ago, picking up Yahoo and a number of other customers along the way. It's got a strategic partnership with Intel to get its technology onboard next-generation PCs, and it has rolled out a bunch of software clients to support VoIP calling on WiFi.

However, the company seems to recognize the real way to make money is to be a service provider in addition to being a brand for end-user calls. At the end of February, Jajah cut a deal with BoldCall to provide online retail customers with Jajah's click-to-call services.

For more:
- Venture Beat makes the call. Post.

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Can you make money from VoIP? Panelists from Jajah, Mobivox and Voxeo discussed the current market landscape and where they've been looking to grow their respective businesses. According to Mobivox VP Larry Lisser, "There are novel and compelling opportunities to make money."

As venture money dried up, consolidation hit the industry, and the broken model of revenue being generated by free calls sorted itself out, VoIP providers have had to innovate to find working, revenue-generating business models. Complicating matters has been belt-tightening by larger corporations, but this has been offset by mobile services wanting to add more applications without more capital spending.

Jajah boasted of the ability to offer white-label services to landline providers, enabling them to "make back" some of their lost long distance revenue, while wireless providers want to find a way to expand services to new areas without buying spectrum or building new towers. They're also making money as the VoIP-outsource player for brands like Match.com and Yahoo.

Mobivox has moved outside the box of the Tier 1 North American market to look for customers throughout the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) space. Mobile VoIP and VoIP-based application services are expected to bring new customers "out of the woodwork."

For more:
- Wall Street Journal's Venture Capital Dispatch blog.

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