Wednesday, April 27th, 2011 at 12:14 PM EST

Earlier this month, Phone.com announced a marketing partnership with the Tarkenton Companies, founded by NFL Hall of Fame legend Fran Tarkenton. We were drawn to the Tarkenton Companies because of their strong focus on helping businesses with ten or less employees to grow, prosper, and compete effectively with much larger, more established organizations. This fits perfectly with the Phone.com approach. Our mission is to help small businesses enjoy the benefits of advanced phone service and avail themselves of new “cloud-based” services as they become available.

In addition to superior quality, economically priced voice phone services, many entrepreneurs and small businesses also need other forms of support that may seem out of reach financially. Assistance in writing effective business plans, developing a cost-effective Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, determining how to incorporate, or even addressing Human Resources (HR) issues may keep start-up business people awake at night. Tarkenton’s StarterSuccess offers these kinds of resources at extremely attractive prices along with high quality in the same vein as Phone.com.

As CEO of Phone.com, it is important that you know that we do not believe in “walled gardens” or “islands of functionality.” We recognize that it is not the technology that is important to our customers – it is the value that our underlying technologies deliver! To that end, we continue to move towards making available not just “unified communications” but rather “unified business processes” to our customers. Phone.com has always been about thinking “outside of the box.” Our relationship with the Tarkenton Companies is one more step in that direction and our desire to provide important solutions to small businesses!