Sangoma Broaden’s Their Horizons With Paraxip Deal

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For most, PSTN connectivity hardware is a yawn.

That’s why the recent acquisition of Paraxip, a company that focuses on IP telephony connectivity cards in the Windows space, has not gotten as much press as us hardware folks might have imagined. You see, Paraxip has developed proprietary, patent-pending software technology to solve complex enterprise network interconnection problems. The suite of products from Paraxip departs from its competitors in its use of an all-software approach, as opposed to an appliance model. The solution can thus be integrated and deployed more cost effectively and easily by OEM customers.

This means a hardware company focused on open source telephony, purchased a software company focused on the enterprise and call center  space.

Forget the obvious synergies here. Let’s talk about what this says about the Windows VoIP marketplace and the overall VoIP marketplace. For the last few years, Asterisk and it’s many varieties have dominated the IP telephony scene and companies like Sangoma have prospered because of it (just look at how their stock price has increased). However over the last six months, more and more focus has been placed on Microsoft’s push into VoIP and what that means for the market as a whole.

I know the folks over at Sangoma very well. They are incredibly smart business people and if they are willing to make an investment like this, into a space that while complimentary, is the complete opposite to their current business, then I would say that the dawn of Windows centric VoIP  becoming a major force is very closely upon us. Whether this is a good thing for the industry at large remains to be seen, but to Sangoma, it must be, otherwise they wouldn’t have shelled out 4.8 million.