Phone systems vendor, Fonality, has acquired SugarCRM specialist, Insightful Solutions, for an undisclosed sum.

Former co-founder and CEO of Insightful, Marc Englaro, said it had done a handful of projects around Fonality's SugarCRM system and began discussions about how they could develop joint products.

"The closest we could work together was by acquisition," he said. "Insightful was excited by this because it takes what we do in A/NZ and Asia-Pacific and broadens the places where we can deliver our existing managed CRM services."

As a part of the acquisition, Fonality will now be selling Insightful's SugarCRM managed services. The FonalityCRM solution will be integrated with PBXtra and the trixbox Pro platform. It features click-to-call dialing, agent screen pops and telephone campaign management for out-bound sales teams. The combined PBX and CRM offering will be available for partners in the first quarter of next year.

Over the next few months, Insightful will also be re-branded as Fonality.

All 15 Insightful staff have been retained. Englaro has taken on the role as Fonality's CRM division general manager. The company is currently looking to recruit software and Web-based developers, sales and consultants.

Insightful manages about 120 CRM systems in the Asia-Pacific region, which will be joining Fonality's customer base of about 2500.

"Our primary focus is SMB with people that have more than five staff and are starting to need centralised CRM functionality to manage their sales and support teams," Englaro said.

He was searching for more systems integrators and resellers with an established customer base and presence.

"We are still working on a channel model, particularly on the CRM side of things," he said. "I think this combined CRM and PBX offering will be a real differentiator for partners in the SMB market."