Xobni, the an Outlook search and relationship plugin, has announced an investment from the BlackBerry Partners Fund to bring the company’s Series B round to over $10 million. The company has also removed its beta label with the introduction of Xobni v1.7. The new version of Xobni includes significant performance improvements to its relationship management sidebar and is available as a free download here: http://xobni.com/download
The BlackBerry Partners Fund’s investment allows Xobni to continue developing innovative solutions, including its lightning fast inbox search and powerful relationship management tools. The funding will also accelerate the development of a premium version of the product slated for release later this summer. The investment from BlackBerry Partners Fund brings the total raised in Xobni’s Series B funding to over $10M and adds BlackBerry Partners Fund Partner, Rick Segal, to Xobni’s board of directors. Xobni closed the first part of the Series B in January 2009, led by Cisco Systems.
“Xobni has a very compelling value proposition and we look forward to its extension into new platforms and use cases,” said Rick Segal of the BlackBerry Partners Fund. “We’re delighted to be part of Xobni’s growth and success.”
“We’re excited the BlackBerry Partners Fund shares our vision of improving email search and management,” said Jeff Bonforte, Xobni CEO. “With the additional funding, Xobni will strengthen its service and extend it to new platforms for our customers.”
Since the launch of Xobni’s public beta in May 2008, the company has been working to optimize speed and performance. The new version of Xobni makes the following significant improvements:
- Reduced Outlook Startup Time – Xobni now loads much faster inside Outlook
- Faster Message Loading – Xobni profile data is now cached, reducing delays between loading messages
- Indexing Controls – users can now control how often and how much of their mail is indexed
- Sidebar Controls – users can now choose for Xobni to open automatically with Outlook or only open when they need it
Xobni has also enhanced its product offering throughout the past year by developing strategic partnerships with leading content providers including LinkedIn, Facebook, Yahoo! Mail, Skype and Hoover’s
via Xobni
