ShoreTel yesterday announced it will acquire UC cloud provider Corvisa for $8.5 million.
ShoreTel said the acquisition is expected to accelerate its hosted revenue growth roughly 30%, according to the press release. This acceleration rate is expected based on four areas of impact from the acquisition:
First, ShoreTel expects Corvisa's open APIs and SDKs to help accelerate its third-party application integration. Second, ShoreTel will be newly positioned as a SIP trunking provider with the addition of Corvisa's SIP Trunking business, which is expected to unlock "new revenue streams for ShoreTel and its channel partners while delivering simpler transactions for customers," the release states.
Third, ShoreTel will expand its presence in the contact center market with the addition of Corvisa's standalone cloud contact center business. Finally, ShoreTel will acquire roughly 95 employees from Corvisa, most in customer-facing or technical roles. "These highly desired technical engineers will be instrumental in the acceleration of ShoreTel's innovative architecture and product roadmap," the release states.
ShoreTel has been in the news as a potential acquisition target, rather than an acquirer. You may remember last year when the business communications world was speculating on a possible Mitel purchase of ShoreTel -- plans that were soon laid to rest after unsuccessful negotiations. And though not a large player, Corvisa has been an innovator and a company we've been watching here at No Jitter. Just last month, managing editor Beth Schultz reported on Corvisa's expansion of its international presence with the addition of points of presence in Amsterdam and London.
Yesterday's release also touched on this, noting that this acquisition will also enable ShoreTel to expand its cloud services in Europe through Corvisa's data centers in the U.K. and Amsterdam. As Beth wrote last month, Corvisa was considering adding POPs in the Asia-Pacific region next, but we'll have to wait and see if those plans will be cast aside with this acquisition. In the news release today, Corvisa CEO Matt Lautz had some enthusiastic words about the acquisition:
"We are delighted to be joining ShoreTel," he said. "ShoreTel has global reach, is able to scale for all business communication needs and has shown a strong record of growth. We believe Corvisa's cloud contact center coupled with ShoreTel's go-to-market expertise in this area creates a compelling combination."
The deal is slated to be finalized in the March 2016 quarter.
"The acquisition of Corvisa aligns tightly with our strategic plan and acquisition priorities," said ShoreTel president and CEO Don Joos, in the release. "We are in our acceleration phase of our strategic plan, focused on accelerating technology time to market, growing hosted revenue, and expanding our cloud offering globally. Corvisa's technology and engineering resources are very complementary to ShoreTel. I'm excited about the robust APIs to accelerate application integration and the additional growth that an expanded cloud contact center will bring."
The issues driving the ShoreTel-Corvisa deal -- cloud communications, APIs, contact centers, primarily -- will be highlighted at Enterprise Connect 2016, taking place March 7-10 at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando, Fla at. With the show happening right around the time this deal is slated to close, an update on the joining of these two companies will be making my to-do list for the event. If you haven't already gotten your EC16 pass, register now to take advantage of reduced rates. Use the code NJPOST to receive $200 off the current conference price.
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