Consolidation has been coming to the VoIP space as well. The other day, it was the news that BroadSoft was picking up Casabi, and now it is merger plans between Broadvox and Cypress Communications. Peter Radiseki broke the news (again!) last week, and the company has since acknowledged their plans. The combined company will have more than 10K customers and 300 employees. The details of this deal are a reminder that while VoIP platforms may look alike, they can be quite different when one looks closer. BroadVox and Cypress are actually quite different companies and, as they clearly believe, rather complementary – as described in a piece by Broadvox’s VP of Marketing, David Byrd over on VON. I doubt this integration will be easy, but then what is these days…
BroadVox is an ITSP that mainly sells SIP trunks, and has lately moved into Hosted PBX’s for the SMB space via the purchase of Reignmaker. Cypress focuses more on somewhat larger enterprises and managed services with its C4 platform and operates as a CLEC. According to the PR, each platform and its customers will be unaffected as they will keep current systems in place. For now anyway… I can’t imagine they don’t have longer term plans to evolve those systems into something more unified, Just what will be born out of the union of Broadvox and Cypress is an open question, and is representative of the changes sweeping the space.
Those who survived the winnowing of the birth of the VoIP era did so by tightly focusing their efforts on various niches in the enterprise and wholesale spaces, but those survivors have lately gained confidence are now widening their viewpoint. With the apparent impending arrival of UC and cloud computing, they seem ready now to leave the niche behind take on a more general role. There is risk there, but perhaps a pot of gold too.
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Categories: Mergers and Acquisitions · VoIP
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Would love to know how much Cypress went for
under $2m
3 points:
– Do you think 300 employees is a lot for 10K customers?
– It will cost huge payroll to keep 3 platforms running – C4, Broadsoft, and Broadvox platform. Is it worth it?
– I was surprised because I thought Broadvox was a licensed CLEC.
It all depends on the underlying platforms – primarily softswitch. I’d migrate and sell everything else. Yes, too many employees but this is really a function of ARPU. When the deal closes and they shut down atlanta this should decrease.