RingCentral has closed its series B funding, raising $12 million from new lead investors DAG Ventures and NCD Investors and returning investors Sequoia Capital and Khosla Ventures. RingCentral also announced that it surpassed 50,000 active customer accounts, doubling its customer base in one year. Accounts range from one to many subscribers, typically in small businesses with 20 or fewer employees.

The company will use the new funding to enhance its products and services, build new partnerships and distribution channels and increase awareness among its large and growing base of small business customers.

Commenting on the investment, Khosla Venture's David Weiden said, "Today few small businesses would set up their own web or email software using onsite hardware, and more and more software is outsourced as a service everyday. RingCentral extends this value proposition to telecom hardware, saving thousands in cost and providing more functionality with an easy to use online service."

RingCentral offers the advanced capabilities of traditional office public branch exchange (PBX) systems plus integrated voice/web applications. Unlike traditional PBX or office phone systems, RingCentral is hosted on the web and is delivered in a subscription-based, software-as-a-service model. Examples of services include:

• Setup and customization in minutes on the web
• Toll-free and local business phone and fax numbers
• Multiple extensions with voicemail
• Call-forwarding to any phone
• Message alerts on cell phones or PDAs
• Greetings recorded by professional voice talent
• Optional voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) lines.
• Features such as these allow RingCentral's small business customers to use voice communications in new ways while offering cost-savings, ease of use and better functionality over traditional office phone systems.