Ericsson has completed its acquisition of Vonage Holdings Corp. (Vonage). As a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Group, Vonage will become a separate business area undertaken as the Business Area Global Communications Platform (BGCP).
The closed transaction supports Ericsson’s strategy to leverage technology leadership to grow its mobile network business and expand into the enterprise sector, by having access to powerful building blocks that offer a full suite of communications solutions including, CPaaS, UCaaS and CCaaS.
Börje Ekholm, President and CEO of Ericsson said, “We are already seeing great progress with frontrunner CSPs, and we aim to launch the first 5G network APIs in the coming year. We will continue to create new, enhanced applications and services for enterprises, while driving continued innovation on Vonage’s UCaaS and CCaaS applications, helping businesses create new digital experiences for better communications, connections and engagement.”
Vonage currently serves over 120,000 business customers and has a global community of more than one million registered developers. This, combined with Ericsson’s deep network expertise, industry-leading portfolio and global scale, is expected to enable the leading vendor to seed and accelerate the market for global network APIs. As a result, CSPs will benefit from global reach, beyond that of national or regional setups.
“Vonage was born out of innovation and is today a global leader in business cloud communications. This partnership will strengthen our offerings to businesses across the globe by leveraging Ericsson’s leadership in 5G, global market presence and strong R&D capabilities. With the demand for UCaaS, CCaaS and Communications APIs growing rapidly, the combined expertise, talent and innovation is good news for our customers and partners,” commented Rory Read, Vonage CEO and appointed Senior Vice President and Head of BGCP, as well as member of Ericsson’s Executive Team.
Utilizing Vonage’s CPaaS offering, Ericsson aims to transform the way advanced 5G network capabilities are exposed, consumed and paid for. This will provide the global developer community with easy access to 4G and 5G network capabilities via open APIs which will, in turn, enable them to create new and innovative consumer and enterprise applications that will further drive the rollout of 5G and network CAPEX.
“By linking the network world with the global developer community, we’re creating a paradigm shift that will put the network at the center, allowing the CSPs a new monetization opportunity supporting increasing investments in high-performance networks,” Ekholm added.
To accelerate growth in Vonage’s UCaaS and CCaaS solutions, Ericsson also intends to increase R&D investments and offer these solutions to CSPs, enabling Ericsson’s existing customers to sell through their own brands and accelerate growth.
The acquisition will also further strengthen Ericsson’s presence and long-term commitment to the United States, where it has a 120-year history of conducting business.
“Together, Ericsson and Vonage will be at the heart of the next wave of the digital transformation, providing enterprises, CSPs and end users with innovative applications and services that will change how business gets done. We will drive deeper connections and engagement among employees and across customer touchpoints, making for exceptional experiences,” concluded Read.
