And so the VoIP Consolidation continues. (This is a good thing for two reasons: I need something to write about and this industry has too many players mucking about.)
Rumor has it that Broadvox has inked a deal to acquire Cypress Communications, a deal that they had been working on for months. No details have been released yet. I'm not sure even the employees know yet. I have requests in with Broadvox for comment.
It will be a painful integration. Broadvox sells mainly SIP Trunking and wholesale on its own platform. Cypress Communications started life as a BLEC (building local exchange carrier) selling service off Nortel to tenants of buildings owned by the investment arm that owned Cypress. The Nortel platform is still in use and for sale today. Last year, Cypress bought Reignmaker, a Broadsoft-based ITSP.
So now they have 3 platforms to work with. That will be a lot of cutting over of customers to consolidate on one platform.
Broadvox is rolling out a Hosted PBX offering. This move may help the success of that roll out.
Broadvox mainly sells through the Agent Channel and via wholesale direct reps. Cypress Communications has been in the Channel (to what success I do not know), but Cypress also sells direct to the SME space.
In more consolidation news, Zone Telecom merged with ANPI to combine their wholesale divisions. As the press release states, "to serve 1,300 enterprise customers and nearly 800 wholesale customers in the independent local exchange carrier (ILEC), competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) and interexchange carrier (IXC) markets." Read the rest here.
UPDATE on Broadvox-Cypress merger here.
Frank Grillo left this comment on the blog, but on the About Me page. I had to move it to here.
"I invite you to read TMCNet's blog, UC-360, written by Frank Grillo, EVP of Marketing, Implementation and Support at Cypress Communications. He writes of the facts and benefits of the merger between Broadvox and Cypress. Unlike your blog, he does not speculate. I do realize that as a blogger, opinions are paramount. However, I was disappointed to see you speculate in your blog. The release with details of the merger can be found at: http://cypresscom.net/docs/news/Cypress-and-Broadvox-Initial-Announcement_final_101410.pdf."
NOTE: Also, the PDF is 404. And the blog URL for Frank's Blog is: http://blog.tmcnet.com/uc-360/2010/10/all_blogs_are_not_created_equal.html