As summer came to a close, so did a major open source acquisition. There’s been a lot of activity disrupting the industry, so in case you missed it, here’s a roundup of the top headlines that have been making waves and changing the unified communications landscape.
If you’ve been on Twitter since September 25th, you’ve probably seen some pretty funny tweets about the extensive Webex Teams outage that left users without a fully functioning service for a week. Yes, you read that right - an entire week. What could possibly cause that to happen? According to a statement from Cisco, “the service interruption was the result of an automated script running on our Webex Teams platform which deleted the virtual machines hosting the service” and called it “...a process issue, not a technical issue.” Critics are placing all the blame on Cisco, and are clearly questioning its processes.
Digium, creator of the open source communication platform Asterisk, was acquired by Sangoma Technologies Corporation for $28 million in a deal that closed on September 5th. Sangoma is no amateur when it comes to acquisitions (this is the company’s seventh acquisition in 7 years) but this acquisition in particular is making headlines because it is a major move in the open source community - and a sign that demand is growing for open source solutions. Competitors will be keeping a close eye on Sangoma and the open source community in the year to come. And, on that note...
Sangoma is already making moves...in the UK.
Sangoma Technologies Inc., a subsidiary of Sangoma Technologies Corporation, is making moves in the UK and has launched their cloud-based business communication suite and SIP Trunking service. According to Sangoma, by expanding into the UK market, they are hoping to provide seamless communications and instill confidence in users.
The Only Thing Constant Aside from Change? Acquisitions.
Another notable acquisition happened in September when Vonage acquired CCaaS provider NewVoiceMedia for $350 million in cash. Also an organization not foreign to acquisitions, this came a month after Vonage acquired TokBox, a WebRTC programmable video provider, and is Vonage’s largest acquisition to date. Through these acquisitions, Vonage is expanding its addressable market, and all eyes will be on Vonage to see exactly how they handle this potential for significant growth.
The global UCaaS market report was released in early August and projects that the UCaaS market will grow at a CAGR of 11% to 2025. As 2018 winds down and organizations prepare revenue forecasts for 2019 and beyond, additional reports and analyses of the UCaaS market will likely emerge, and it is imperative for companies looking to UCaaS for growth to stay informed.
Make sure you keep up-to-date with what’s going on in the unified communications industry by subscribing to our blog and following us on Twitter!
