Chatting Up Sales, Customers, and Microsoft Attention

Picture this, or rather, chat it up: IM on steroids. That’s how Nick Fera, Chairman and CEO of Parlano, refers to the company’s product. Parlano has turned chatting and instant messaging into a powerful business tool called MindAlign—a group chat collaboration service built entirely on the Microsoft .NET Framework, taking full advantage of Microsoft Live Communications Server.

Fera says the company's vision was to be the “leader in persistent group chat. That was it. The problem we solved was providing an easy-to-use interface with all the scalable server technology, with all the security and authentication built in to be able to manage many large groups of text-based communications going on in real time. We are very good at creating these persistent group chat forums, and have largely served the financial services community and capital market groups, but are beginning to expand into horizontal applications like customer services, sales, development and project management.

“We think that broadening and maturation of our technology is what caught the attention of Microsoft.”

The Microsoft connection? Parlano has been working with the Emerging Business Team for more than three years and has established a strong partner relationship, culminating in an acquisition by Microsoft. The relationship began with introductions to the Microsoft Office product groups, and later included teaming up with Microsoft on marketing campaigns, trade shows, product demos and partner success stories.

Says Fera, “The Microsoft relationship was very key, and very important to us.

“In early 2003, before Microsoft had released Live Communications Server, now called Office Communications Server, we had to make a critical decision. Did we want to compete against Microsoft, IBM and others in this space or did we want to leverage Microsoft’s infrastructure and build on top of that infrastructure all the things we knew about persistent group chat, scalability of users, authentication, management of chat rooms, etc.

“We decided we did not want to compete in the IM presence game. We knew that if we could work on top of the Microsoft platform, and if they could provide us with the APIs and the knowledge necessary, we could leverage the platform and extend it beyond just text-based communication into a world that Microsoft is now pushing, that is extremely important: text, voice, data, video, web, ultimately the convergence of unified communications.”

Where are they now? With 100 percent year-over-year sales growth, Parlano has significant customer traction in the financial services sector. Seventy-five percent of the top 25 global commercial banks are customers, including UBS, Deutshe Bank, ABN Amro, Royal Bank of Scotland, Wachovia, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers. In fact, stock market traders are using MindAlign to share fast moving market information with their colleagues and form trading strategies.

In late August 2007, Microsoft agreed to acquire Chicago-based Parlano and expects to add Parlano’s group chat functionality as a new feature of Microsoft Office Communications Server and Microsoft Office Communicator, Microsoft’s server and client software for presence, instant messaging, conferencing and VoIP.

Says Fera, “We’re now working right alongside the Microsoft sales and marketing team to fully solidify, enhance and contribute to persistent chat, and, in a smaller way, to this grand unified communications story that Microsoft is out delivering and communicating today. And delivering on.”

According to Fera, the decision to be acquired by Microsoft offered many advantages.

“I felt the timing was right to strategically address the future of Parlano. Considering the multiple paths we could have gone, including remaining independent, we felt this outcome was best for all stakeholders, not the least of which was the long-term view of our customers. Now Parlano (MindAlign) is part of a significant platform from Microsoft. The investment in that future will greatly benefit everyone involved.”

For more, read Parlano's success story from Innovation Starts Here, Volume 5.