Extending its market reach to small businesses, session border control vendor Acme Packet (APKT) today said it will buy Convergence, a maker of software-based border controllers. The deal is valued at just under $23 million; Convergence’s core management team will relocate to Acme headquarters in Burlington, Massachusetts.
Acme Packet dominates the market for hardware-based session border controllers, which pass handoffs from separate IP networks. The company’s core customer base has been carriers and telecom service providers, and CEO Andy Ory has made clear his intention to move more strongly into the enterprise market. Convergence’s software-based system for border control “accelerates [our] ability to now satisfy the SIP trunking SBC requirements of enterprise small offices and remote sites,” Ory said in a statement.
At VoiceCon earlier this year, Acme debuted its own lower priced solution designed for small and medium-sized businesses and remote offices. The company is also trying to anticipate the path to 4G wireless networking, introducing a controller designed for Long-Term Evolution (LTE) systems at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
While Convergence’s software is well-suited for smaller offices, the company also brings with it four customers from the top 25 companies in the Fortune 500. Selling into the enterprise means competing against Cisco (CSCO), which has long dominated the market for enterprise networking gear. Cisco has also begun offering software solutions but still derives the majority of its revenue from boxes.
Shares in Acme Packet, which have increased 57 percent in value since the start of the year, were down slightly in early afternoon trading on the Nasdaq.
