Comverse Acquires Acision, Framing Digital an APIs Around WebRTC

Is Comverse becoming a serious WebRTC player?

Comverse is a company in transition. It has been catering the world's telcos for many years. In recent years, it had its share of issues. Why are they important in the context of this blog?

1. They acquired Solaiemes. But that was in August 2014. Almost a year ago
2. Less than 2 months ago, Comverse sold its BSS business to Amdocs
3. Yesterday, it acquired Acision, for around $210M

What does this say about Comverse?

Comverse is a company searching for their way. Their current focus is digital services with the set of customers being Telcos.

Digital focus means APIs and platforms that enable rapid creation of services.

The interesting part here is that Comverse is getting a sales team and an operation that knows how to sell to enterprises and not only to Telcos. I do hope they will be smart enough to keep that part of the business alive and leverage it.

Open questions include: Will Comverse merge Acision assets with Solaiemes? Try to build one on top of the other?

What does this say about Acision?

Acision got acquired for their SMS and voice business more than for their WebRTC or API platform components. No one gets acquired for that much money for WebRTC. Yet.

It is funny to note that Acision Forge platform, which runs their WebRTC PaaS part, was an acquisition of Crocodile RCS.

Comverse being focused on Telcos, how will they view the Forge platform?

• As something to be sold to carriers or through carriers? This means taking the route that Tropo took in recent years
• Would they try to leverage it and expand their offering to enterprises in other areas?
• Will Comverse management understand the enterprise business enough to try and let it grow unhindered?

Why is this important?

This isn't the first or last WebRTC related acquisition of the year. We had a few already.

If you are looking to use any vendor for your WebRTC technology, you need to consider the possibility of acquisition seriously.