Collanos Blog

The third largest Swiss Bank, Zürcher Kantonalbank (ZKB), comes on board as an additional institutional investor in Collanos Software, a Swiss-American start-up.

Experienced management, promising products, an innovative business model, and a compelling market with a demonstrable growing global user community were the key criteria for the decision. ZKB joins existing notable private and institutional investors American Ecosystem Ventures, and serial Swiss entrepreneurs Andreas Danuser (Swiss VoIP Pioneer) and Reto Hartinger.

The ZKB investment allows Collanos to continue the development of free teamwork and phone solutions and get ready for the launch of the much anticipated Premium services developed along with partner Translumina Networks. ZKB intends to take on a role as an active investor, as Oliver Schärli, Head of ZKB Start-up Finance, was quoted: “Collanos will for sure profit as well from our great networking with other institutional investors“ .

“We are excited that the thorough financial, technical and economical due diligence, conducted by Switzerland’s third largest bank’s Start-up Finance specialists, resulted in this outcome,” said Peter Helfenstein, CEO of Collanos Software. “Since we have been a certified CTI start-up company for a while now, ZKB’s decision further substantiates the quality and outlook of our venture. We are well prepared and confident that we will close our Series A financing round very soon”.

Mit der Zürcher Kantonalbank (ZKB) holt sich das schweizerisch-amerikanische Software Startup Collanos einen weiteren institutionellen Investor an Bord.

Die professionelle Unternehmensführung, ein vielversprechendes Produkt, ein innovatives Businessmodell und ein interessanter Markt mit einer bereits sehenswerten globalen Benutzergemeinde gaben den Ausschlag für den Investitionsentscheid. Die ZKB reiht sich so zu namhaften privaten wie institutionellen Investoren. Bereits in Collanos investiert sind die amerikanische Ecosystem Ventures, der schweizerische Voice over IP-Pionier und Unternehmer Dr. Andreas Danuser oder der Internet-Experte Reto Hartinger.

Die Investition der ZKB erlaubt es Collanos, die Entwicklung der frei verfügbaren Teamwork- und Telefonielösungen fortzuführen und zusätzlich die kostenpflichtigen Collanos Premium Services mit dem Partner Translumina Networks auf den Markt zu bringen. ZKB Start-up Finance versteht sich nicht nur als Investor. „Collanos wird bestimmt auch von unserer guten Vernetzung mit anderen institutionellen Investoren profitieren können“, sagt Oliver Schärli, Head Start-up Finance der ZKB.

„Wir sind sehr stolz darauf, dass die sehr exakte, umfassende finanzielle und fachliche Prüfung durch den Start-up-Bereich der drittgrössten Schweizer Bank zu diesem positiven Resultat geführt hat“, erklärt Peter Helfenstein, CEO von Collanos Software, „Bereits seit einiger Zeit mit dem KTI-Startup Label ausgezeichnet, belegt diese Entscheidung der ZKB die Qualität und Vertrauenswürdigkeit unseres Ventures. Wir sind für die bald anstehende Series A Finanzierungsrunde gut vorbereitet und sehr zuversichtlich.“

Collanos Software wishes you a happy and prosperous New Year.

2008 will be important for Collanos and hopefully quite exciting for you, one of our thousands “pioneering users”!

Collanos Phone Beta:

We’re starting the year with the introduction of valuable new (and free) functionality!

In cooperation with our voice services partner, Translumina Networks, we just launched the first Beta version of Collanos Phone, a service with voice, video and instant messaging features. The Beta program will demonstrate the robustness of the new offering. We hope you will enjoy these great new features. Your experiences and feedback are highly regarded and valuable to us and the entire Collanos user community. Please check it out and share your opinion on our Community site.

After the Beta phase (should last a couple of weeks) we will launch Collanos Phone 1.0, including premium voice features, allowing you to be called from the public telephone network as well as to call team members’ phones.

Integrated in the Phone is a multi-protocol instant messaging capability, allowing you to use Collanos Phone as your instant messaging front end to AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ and Jabber.

Note: Collanos Phone uses the same “Collanos Name” and user profile that you have already created with Collanos Workplace.

Collanos Workplace 1.2:
As you may be aware, we recently launched a much improved version of Collanos Workplace, 1.2. After migrating the supporting infrastructure to this new version, it is now required for all users to upgrade to Collanos Workplace 1.2. Earlier versions (V1.1 and older) are no longer supported by the network infrastructure.

The next version of Collanos Workplace, 1.3, including the long awaited team synchronization functionality as well as new messaging capabilities, will follow very soon.

Both the new Collanos Phone Beta and Collanos Workplace can be downloaded from http://www.collanos.com/downloads. We look forward to reading about your experiences. You can be assured, while 2008 has just started, it will be an exciting year for Collanos users!