The news reports that caught my eye this week:

ShoreTel acquires M5 Networks

ShoreTel’s 2Q2012 revenue came in at +22% year-over-year (quarterly net loss of $2.5 million) — not bad for a company that hasn’t dug deep into the cloud. But that’s all about to change as it scoops up cloud communications provider M5 Networks for $146.3 million in cash and stock.

No doubt that ShoreTel was able to nip at the traditional premise voice market by being aggressive and signing on major partners (Ingram Micro, Windstream, and HP). Really, being up 22% Y0Y is impressive especially in this economy where most money is being spent on cloud solutions. The M5 Networks pickup will definitely strengthen its offerings and expand the customer base.

West Interactive releases Holly 6.0 (?!)

The acquisition of Holly Connects was announced in May 2010. For an year and a half we don’t hear a blip about it…

Then this pops up in my news feed that got me all excited. But no corresponding link to an official press release or even a blog post.

Nothing on West Interactive’s website, either. In fact, the last news listed there was dated August 11, 2011.

Hmmm, anything from @WestInteractive? Plenty of tweets but nothing about the major release of Holly 6.

I can’t wait to hear more about the TuVox acquisition, if any news ever makes it out officially…

Major breaking news in speech tech: Nuance announced today that it will scoop up Vlingo. Oh, and happy Hanukkah (not in the press release).

Supposedly Vlingo was the other company that Apple was evaluating when developing Siri on the iPhone 4S. Here’s a bit of backstory between Vlingo and Nuance. It’s not pretty, but now it’s over. TechCrunch also chimes in.

This would be the gazillionth company that Nuance has acquired in recent years. In fact, there are hardly any other competitors left, so I predict that the speech giant may enter a new market soon. I’m thinking a wearable device for pets which will translate barks and meows into synthesized human speech. It’ll need a lot of animal test subjects in such case, therefore don’t be surprised if it starts buying pet stores (chains and mom-and-pops) as well as operate zoos.

General consumers and techies alike have raised concerns over AT&T buying T-Mobile (deal is now off) for fear of an anti-competitive carrier marketplace. Yet nobody thinks about the speech marketplace whenever they ask Siri to perform a task.

The press release:

Burlington, Mass. – December 20, 2011 – Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) announced it has signed an agreement to acquire Vlingo, Inc. Fueled by unprecedented demand for intelligent voice interfaces that combine voice, language understanding and semantic processing, Nuance and Vlingo will combine their deep innovation and R&D expertise to deliver next-generation natural language interfaces across numerous markets and industries.

Consumer interest and demand for virtual assistant and voice-enabled capabilities have exploded in recent months, creating a $5 billion market opportunity that spans phones, tablets, cars, televisions, navigation devices, music players, PCs and more. Both Nuance and Vlingo see an unprecedented appetite for intelligent devices that understand the spoken word and deliver outcomes for consumers and professionals.

“Inspired by the introduction of services such as Apple’s Siri and our own Dragon Go!, virtually every mobile and consumer electronics company on the planet is looking for ways to integrate natural, conversational voice interactions into their mobile products, applications, and services,” said Mike Thompson, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Nuance Mobile.  “By acquiring Vlingo, we are able to accelerate the pace of innovation to meet this demand.”

“Vlingo and Nuance have long shared a similar vision for the power and global proliferation of mobile voice and language understanding. As a result of our complementary research and development efforts, our companies are stronger together than alone. Our combined resources afford us the opportunity to better compete, and offer a powerful proposition to customers, partners and developers,” said Dave Grannan, CEO, Vlingo.

By harnessing the combined expertise in voice, language and multilingual capabilities, Nuance will be able to take advantage of the adoption of intelligent mobile assistants, where consumers, businesses, doctors and patients can engage in more human, natural interactions with devices and systems all over the world.

Vlingo is a Virtual Assistant that turns your words into action by combining voice to text technology, natural language processing, and Vlingo’s Intent Engine to understand the user’s intent and take the appropriate action. Founded in 2006, Vlingo is backed by Charles River Ventures, Sigma Partners, Yahoo! and AT&T and headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For more information, go to www.vlingo.com.

Nuance is a leading provider of voice and language solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with information and how they create, share and use documents. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications and professional services. For more information, please visit: nuance.com.

Nuance and the Nuance logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States of America and/or other countries. All other company names or product names may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Statements in this press release regarding the proposed transaction between Nuance and Vlingo, the market opportunity, the pace of innovation, increased customer demand in the mobile market, future product offerings by the combined company, and any other statements about Nuance managements’ future expectations, beliefs, goals, plans or prospects constitute forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any statements that are not statements of historical fact (including statements containing the words “believes,” “plans,” “anticipates,” “expects,” estimates and similar expressions) should also be considered to be forward looking statements. There are a number of important factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those indicated by such forward looking statements, including the ability to consummate the transaction; the ability of Nuance to successfully integrate Vlingo’s operations and employees; the ability to realize anticipated synergies and cost savings; the failure to retain customers; and the other factors described in the ability of Nuance to integrate the product offerings of the combined companies and other the factors described in Nuance’s Annual Report on Form 10 K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2011 and other filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Nuance disclaims any intention or obligation to update any forward looking statements as a result of developments occurring after the date of this press release.

I’m with Alexia Tsotsis of TechCrunch on this — yawn (gotta love her choice of permalink too):

I think this means that it provides enterprise software for human resources, but you can never be too sure withthese incredibly dull companies. I am too bored to Google it. In fact, I am literally bored to tears writing this, like I am seriously crying here in my local coffee shop and everyone is looking at me weird and I just want to show them this press release so they’ll understand or something.

So SAP is loaded and adores cloud computing. Besides a press release, SAP also came up with a letter to customers.

The yawn-inducing press release:

SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) and SuccessFactors, Inc. (NYSE: SFSF) today announced that SAP’s subsidiary, SAP America., Inc., has entered into a definitive merger agreement with SuccessFactors, the market-leading provider of cloud-based human capital management (HCM) solutions, pursuant to which a subsidiary of SAP would offer to acquire all outstanding shares of common stock of SuccessFactors for $40.00/per share in cash, representing an enterprise value of approximately $3.4 billion. The acquisition will add SuccessFactors’ widely respected team and technology to SAP’s powerful cloud assets, significantly accelerating SAP’s momentum as a provider of cloud applications, platforms and infrastructure. The combination of SAP and SuccessFactors will establish an advanced end-to-end offering of cloud and on-premise solutions for managing all relevant business processes.

The SuccessFactors board of directors has unanimously approved the transaction. The per share purchase price represents a 52% premium both over the December 2nd closing price and the one month volume weighted average price per share. The transaction will be funded from SAP’s cash on hand and a €1 billion term loan facility.  The closing of the tender offer is conditioned on SuccessFactors stockholders tendering at least a majority of the outstanding shares of SuccessFactors common stock (on a fully diluted basis) and clearances by relevant regulatory authorities. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2012 and be slightly dilutive to SAP’s Non-IFRS earnings per share in 2012 and accretive in subsequent years.

The acquisition marks another stride in SAP’s strategy of delivering solutions on premise, in the cloud and on mobile devices.  It builds on a series of strategic moves in SAP’s targeted growth areas to drive innovation in its core applications and analytics; introduce breakthrough in memory technology; establish leadership in enterprise mobility; and grow its cloud portfolio. SuccessFactors’ solutions are highly complementary to SAP’s core HCM offerings as well as SAP’s strong cloud assets: SAP Business ByDesign for the suite cloud market and SAP’s line of business cloud offerings for large enterprises such as SAP Sales on Demand.

“The cloud is a core of SAP’s future growth, and the combination of SuccessFactors’ leadership team and technology with SAP will create a cloud powerhouse. The acquisition will help us address the top priority for CEOs globally – managing people and talent,” said Bill McDermott, Co-CEO, SAP.  ”Together, SAP and SuccessFactors will create tremendous business value for customers, with potent synergies to accelerate our growth in the cloud.”

“The depth and experience that SAP brings to customers via our cloud and on-premise portfolio fit elegantly with SuccessFactors’ world-class expertise in providing high-performing, low-cost, native cloud applications that customers are passionate about,” said Jim Hagemann Snabe, Co-CEO, SAP.  “Together, we will lead the industry in providing end-to-end solutions consistently to meet any deployment preference, whether on premise, in the cloud or on device.”

“This is a revolutionary combination of proven capabilities that will allow SuccessFactors to accelerate our roadmap by 10 years, and bring the world’s leading application knowledge and intellectual property to our customers through the cloud, and the largest applications customer base instantly,” said Lars Dalgaard, Founder and CEO, SuccessFactors. “Expanding relationships with SAP’s 176,000 customers with our speed to value, friendly user interface, on mobile devices and the web, and seamlessly delivering more SAP solutions in the cloud will be legendary, as organizations adopt the cloud to improve their business. SuccessFactors has proven we have the technology and people to deliver the world’s biggest cloud deployments in terms of users and countries per customer, and also the most applications per customer from the same flexible scalable cloud platform. The business world is ready for enterprise-class cloud applications and together, we can deliver incredible new innovation for global businesses.”

SuccessFactors is believed to operate the largest scale of paying cloud users with 15 million subscription seats. With more than 3,500 customers in 168 countries, SuccessFactors is growing rapidly, recording 77 percent revenue growth year-over-year in the third quarter 2011 and 59 percent revenue growth year-over-year in the first nine months of 2011.   SuccessFactors’ scalable cloud application platform supports organizations of all sizes from dozens to millions of users.  With proven deployments in SAP environments at companies in diverse industries, the combination of SuccessFactors and SAP holds significant growth potential considering the more than 500 million employees of SAP customers and its 15,000 HCM deployments.

With headquarters in San Mateo, California, and more than 1,450 employees, the SuccessFactors team is widely regarded for creating innovative technology, generating more than 80 percent of new sales from applications that did not exist five years ago, and as one of the fastest growing leaders in cloud applications.  Upon completion of the transaction, the CEO of SuccessFactors, Lars Dalgaard, will lead the cloud business of SAP in addition to his responsibility as CEO of SuccessFactors. SuccessFactors will remain independent and be named “SuccessFactors, an SAP company”. The chairman of SAP’s supervisory board, Hasso Plattner, recommended that Lars Dalgaard be appointed to the executive board of SAP AG.

SAP and SuccessFactors Customers to Benefit from Combined Application and Technology Footprint

• The combination of SuccessFactors and SAP will create a comprehensive HCM solution, marrying strength in enterprise applications with people-focused cloud applications.
• SuccessFactors’ complementary solutions will be an attractive option for more than 500 million employees of SAP customers.
• SuccessFactors’ applications are designed for businesses of all sizes, and offer easily adopted solutions for customers of SAP Business Suite, SAP Business ByDesign, SAP Business All-in-One, and SAP Business One.
• SuccessFactors’ cloud expertise and know how, rapid cloud innovation and proven success running large scale cloud deployments will help SAP customers more rapidly adopt cloud applications.
• SuccessFactors’ mobile applications combined with the mobile expertise of SAP and Sybase will offer customers a powerful business-to-employee mobility portfolio.
• SuccessFactors’ focus on enabling business insight and execution fits well with SAP’s business analytics platform, promising new levels of real time decision making across the enterprise.

 

 

Financial Analyst and Media Conference Call
SAP and SuccessFactors will host two conference calls for financial analysts and media to discuss the transaction:
On Saturday, December 3rd, at 7:00 pm CET / 1:00 pm Eastern (Dial-in numbers: Germany: +49 69 5899 90797, UK: +44 20 7190 1595, US: +1 480 629 9771; Replay numbers: UK +44 207 154 2833, US +1 303 590 3030, Germany +49 69 58 99 90 568, Access Code: 4493863#)
Listen to the Webcast

On Monday, December 5th, at 3:00 pm CET / 9:00 am Eastern (Dial-in numbers: Germany: +49 69 5899 90797, UK: +44 20 7190 1595, US: +1-480 629 9722, Conference ID: 4493869; Replay Numbers: UK +44 207 154 2833, US +1 303 590 3030, Germany +49 69 58 99 90 568, Access Code: 4493869#)
Listen to the Webcast

About SAP
As market leader in enterprise application software, SAP (NYSE: SAP) helps companies of all sizes and industries run better. From back office to boardroom, warehouse to storefront, desktop to mobile device – SAP empowers people and organizations to work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively to stay ahead of the competition. SAP applications and services enable more than 176,000 customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and grow sustainably. For more information, visit www.sap.com.

Additional information
This announcement is neither an offer to purchase nor a solicitation of an offer to sell securities.  The tender offer for the outstanding shares of SuccessFactors common stock described in this announcement has not commenced.  At the time the offers are commenced SAP America, Inc. and Saturn Expansion Corporation, an indirect subsidiary of SAP AG, will file a Schedule TO Tender Offer Statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and SuccessFactors, Inc. will file a Schedule 14D-9 Solicitation/Recommendation Statement with respect to the offer.  The Tender Offer Statement (including an offer to purchase, a related letter of transmittal and other offer documents) and the Solicitation/Recommendation Statement will contain important information that should be read carefully before any decision is made with respect to the Tender Offer.  Those materials and other documents filed by SAP AG, SAP America, Inc., Saturn Expansion Corporation or SuccessFactors with the SEC will be available at no charge on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s web site at www.sec.gov.  The Schedule TO Tender Offer Statement and related materials may be obtained for free by directing such requests to SAP AG, Attention: Stefan Gruber, Dietmar-Hopp-Allee 16, 69190 Walldorf, Germany, Telephone:  +49 6227 744872.  The Schedule 14D-9 Solicitation/Recommendation Statement and such other documents may be obtained for free by directing such requests to SuccessFactors Global Headquarters, Attention: Hillary Smith, 1500 Fashion Island Blvd. Suite 300, San Mateo, CA 94404, USA, Telephone +1 (650) 645-2000

Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as “anticipate”, “believe”, “estimate”, “expect”, “forecast”, “intend”, “may”, “plan”, “project”, “predict”, “should” and “’will” and similar expressions as they relate to SAP or SuccessFactors are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. This release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties concerning the parties’ ability to close the transaction and the expected closing date of the transaction, the anticipated benefits and synergies of the proposed transaction, anticipated future combined operations, products and services, and the anticipated role of SuccessFactors, its key executives and its employees within SAP following the closing of the transaction. Actual events or results may differ materially from those described in this release due to a number of risks and uncertainties. These potential risks and uncertainties include, among others, the outcome of regulatory reviews of the proposed transaction, the ability of the parties to complete the transaction, the failure to retain key SuccessFactors employees, customer and partner uncertainty regarding the anticipated benefits of the transaction, the failure of SAP and SuccessFactors to achieve the anticipated synergies of the proposed transaction and other risks detailed in SAP’s and SuccessFactors’ SEC filings, including those discussed in SAP’s annual report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2010 and SuccessFactors’ quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2011, each of which is on file with the SEC and available at the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. Neither SAP nor SuccessFactors is obligated to update these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this document.  Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.

® 2011 SAP AG. All rights reserved.
SAP, R/3, SAP NetWeaver, Duet, PartnerEdge, ByDesign, SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, StreamWork, and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and other countries. Business Objects and the Business Objects logo, BusinessObjects, Crystal Reports, Crystal Decisions, Web Intelligence, Xcelsius, and other Business Objects products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Business Objects Software Ltd. Business Objects is an SAP company.Sybase and Adaptive Server, iAnywhere, Sybase 365, SQL Anywhere, and other Sybase products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sybase, Inc. Sybase is an SAP company. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. Data contained in this document serves informational purposes only. National product specifications may vary. These materials are subject to change without notice. These materials are provided by SAP AG and its affiliated companies (“SAP Group”) for informational purposes only, without representation or warranty of any kind, and SAP Group shall not be liable for errors or omissions with respect to the materials. The only warranties for SAP Group products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services, if any. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty.

Note to editors:
To preview and download broadcast-standard stock footage and press photos digitally, please visitwww.sap.com/photos. On this platform, you can find high resolution material for your media channels. To view video stories on diverse topics, visit www.sap-tv.com. From this site, you can embed videos into your own Web pages, share video via e-mail links and subscribe to RSS feeds from SAP TV.

Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapinvestor.

 

 

For customers interested in learning more about SAP products:
Global Customer Center: +49 180 534-34-24
United States Only: 1 (800) 872-1SAP (1-800-872-1727)

For more information, press only:
Christoph Liedtke, +49 6227 7-50383, christoph.liedtke@sap.com; CET
Jim Dever, +1 (610) 661-2161, james.dever@sap.com; EDT
Andrea Meyer, SuccessFactors, +1 415 370 7329, ameyer@successfactors.com; PST
SAP Press Office, +49 (6227) 7-46315, CET; +1 (610) 661-3200, EDT; press@sap.com

For more information, financial community only:
Stefan Gruber, +49 6227 7-44872, investor@sap.com; CET

Are you still a cloud skeptic? Love those on-premise servers and equipment? Do you laugh at your competitors who are engaged in cloud-based services? Maybe Oracle CEO Larry Ellison can change your mind.

What about your voice services? Do you consider voice as a tool for collaboration? Do you even think about enabling effective collaboration within the organization? Better get on board because many of your voice service providers are no longer focused on just voice.

Oracle buys RightNow

Permira paid $1.5 billion to Alcatel-Lucent for only the Genesys unit. That’s about the same dollar amount paid by Ellison to acquire RightNow Technologies, a SaaS CRM provider. What does this say about cloud computing? Well, Genesys has been around longer and RNT was only started in 1997 (went public in 2004). Yet both valued similarly by the market. Well done, Greg Gianforte.

It’s safe to say that by now Ellison is a convert of cloud services. He may have been slow on this whole cloud thing (after witnessing the tremendous success of companies like Salesforce.com and RNT), but he can make that up by spending money to buy cloud enablers. Kind of like what Microsoft did to correct its path to compete on the World Wide Web. Oracle Public Cloud was just unveiled during OpenWorld a few weeks ago, and today Oracle has a cloud CRM offering with RightNow.

How smooth will the transition be? This is a gigantic Silicon Valley tech company with a big CEO personality gobbling up a young Bozeman, Montana outfit. All I can say is, Don’t mess with Ellison.

Avaya wants to lose its voice

Avaya is making it clear that it values channel partners who can sell collaboration solutions more than the traditional voice service sellers. This is a much needed strategic progression not only because of better profits but because it’s the demand of customers. Customers want solutions that increase productivity and efficiency, and not just some tech that’ll make a call from A to B. And with its recent acquisition of Aurix, Avaya is making a move to provide a more complete collaboration solution to its customers.

The Financial Times just broke the news a few hours ago that Alcatel-Lucent has agreed to sell Genesys — not all of the Enterprise division — to European private equity firm Permira. The final price? $1.5 billion.

No updates on ALU, Genesys, or Permira’s websites.

The saga finally ends (follow the drama here, here, and here)?

(h/t @DanMorehead, @McGeeSmith)

I saw Sipera Systems at the last Enterprise Connect and was intrigued by its market niche: UC and VOIP security. Enterprises are fast to jump on the UC and VOIP bandwagon, but oftentimes they neglect the security aspect of these deployments. Sipera, backed by renowned VCs Sequoia Capital and Star Ventures, was one of the kind to offer comprehensive security solutions with its SBC and UC appliances and software.

Now Sipera has joined the Avaya family. Obviously Avaya will leverage Sipera’s tech portfolio to improve its own UC and SIP products which shouldn’t be too hard since Sipera and Avaya have been close partners for a while now. What’ll be interesting to see is whether Avaya will still offer Sipera solutions for Cisco products.

Read the press release:

For Immediate Release: Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Basking Ridge, NJ – Avaya today announced it has acquired Sipera, a worldwide provider of Unified Communications (UC) solutions, including Session Border Control (SBC) functionality and a range of UC security applications. Sipera will become a fully integrated part of Avaya.

Sipera strengthens Avaya’s UC portfolio with a set of fit-for-purpose, enterprise-class SBC capabilities for Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunking that offers customers and channel partners flexibility, security and value.  The company’s open, standards-based solutions work in both Avaya and non-Avaya networks. Combined with Avaya Aura®, Sipera’s solutions will provide customers with secure VoIP, SIP trunks, videoconferencing, cloud-based communications, instant messaging, and collaboration tools for workers in any location using any business or consumer device.

Sipera provides application-layer security that is intuitive, easy-to-manage and can lower the total cost of ownership of UC and Contact Center deployments. Security features include a patent-pending remote worker solution that helps deploy VPN-less solutions and advanced toll fraud protection.

Quotes:
“Sipera’s broad portfolio of open, enterprise-focused security technologies strongly align with our own Avaya Aura unified communications architecture. Together, we will help customers simplify deployment, management and maintenance of secure, multi-vendor UC and contact center environments while providing them with greater flexibility to support remote and mobile employees using the device that best suits their needs.”
Dr. Alan Baratz, Senior Vice President and President, Global Communications Solutions, Avaya

“Integration of our solutions with Avaya Aura is a significant milestone in the evolution of unified communications. With the combined offerings, users enjoy rich, responsive communication experiences that span multiple channels, applications, devices and networks. These communications incorporate security and compliance features that ensure mission-critical information and resources are safeguarded. Together, our solutions simplify and streamline deployment and management of enterprise UC, improving communications flexibility, accelerating user adoption, and maximizing return on investment.”
Jim Timmer, COO, Sipera

“Kelsey-Seybold Clinic is Houston’s first and longest standing Accountable Care Organization. Kelsey-Seybold is home to more than 370 physicians providing more than 50 medical specialties throughout a network of 20 Houston-area clinics.  Robust communication capabilities and security of our integrated voice and data solutions were key considerations in our selection of Sipera’s technology with Avaya’s contact center and unified communications solutions.  We are excited that this relationship is becoming a permanent one.”
Martin Littmann, Director – Information Technology, Kelsey-Seybold Clinic

Tags:
Unified communications, session border control, SIP trunking, security collaboration, business communications, Avaya Aura, Session Manager

About Avaya:
Avaya is a global provider of business collaboration and communications solutions, providing unified communications, contact centers, data solutions and related services to companies of all sizes around the world.

Certain statements contained in this press release are forward-looking statements. These statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “might,” “plan,” “potential,” “predict,” “should” or “will” or other similar terminology. We have based these forward-looking statements on our current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections. While we believe these expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections are reasonable, such forward looking statements are only predictions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. These and other important factors may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. For a list and description of such risks and uncertainties, please refer to Avaya’s filings with the SEC that are available at www.sec.gov. Avaya disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Media Inquiries:
Deb Kline
908-953-6179
klined@avaya.com

Guess which piece of news came as a shocker?

Dan York, master tweeter and Director of Conversations at Voxeo, will join the nonprofit organization Internet Society (“ISOC”) starting next week, to “join the fight for the open Internet“:

The particular project I will join within ISOC is a brand new initiative targeted at helping bridge the gap between the standards created within the IETF and the network operators and enterprises who are actually deploying networks and technologies based on those standards. To help translate those standards into operational guidance… to help people understand how to deploy those standards and why they should, what benefit they will see, etc

The initiative is currently called the “Deployment and Operationalization Hub”, or “DO Hub”, and while that may or may not be its final name, the idea is to find/curate content that is already out there created by others, create content where there are gaps, make it easy to distribute information about these resources… and promote the heck out of it so that people get connected to the resources that they need. The initial focus will be, somewhat predictably, on IPv6, but also DNSSEC and possibly another technology. It is a new project and the focus is being very deliberately kept tight to see how effective this can be,

My title will be Senior Content Strategist and my role will very much be about the creation, curation and distribution of information. Writing articles, reviewing resources, blogging, creating videos, screencasts, etc, Once we have the initial repository built out, there will be a phase next year where we will be out on the conference circuit talking about these technologies and helping people understand how they can get started… and continually adding even more content.

ISOC, consider yourself very lucky! Best of luck, Dan, and keep those blogs and tweets comin’ — open Internet FTW!

…in other industry news, 8×8 has acquired Contactual in an all-stock deal to bolster its cloud solutions. (Is there a company today that doesn’t go through M&A except for “cloud”?) Press release:

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Sept. 12, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) – 8×8, Inc. (Nasdaq:EGHT), provider of innovative cloud communications and computing solutions, today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Contactual, Inc., a provider of cloud-based call center and customer interaction management solutions, in an all stock transaction that will not exceed 6.7 million shares of common stock of 8×8. 8×8 expects the transaction to close prior to September 30, 2011. 8×8 has been successfully reselling Contactual’s call center technologies as part of its business communications services since 2007 and has seen strong, escalating demand for these services across the 8×8 customer base.

The acquisition of Contactual will further enhance 8×8′s growing suite of cloud services, bolstering its unique position in the market as a single source provider of SaaS (Software as a Service) and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) business solutions, in keeping with its previously stated strategic growth initiatives. Contactual’s revenue for calendar year 2010 was approximately $8.3 million, inclusive of approximately 10% of revenue received from 8×8. The acquisition is expected to be immediately accretive to 8×8′s full fiscal year net income after the exclusion of any one-time costs associated with the acquisition and amortization expenses.

Contactual Call Center solutions will be offered as a resale opportunity to all 8×8 channel partners as part of the company’s recently launched go-to-market channel program which provides partners with the ability to resell a broad range of cloud based services. Currently, 8×8 offers more than 20 cloud services including VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), Conferencing, Video and Cloud Computing.

“8×8 is committed to becoming the industry’s premier provider of cloud-based communications and mission critical services and applications to businesses of all sizes,” said Bryan Martin, Chairman and CEO of 8×8. “The acquisition of Contactual is a natural extension of this strategy as it significantly broadens our technological expertise and service offerings in the customer interaction management and contact center space. At the same time, the acquisition allows us to realize operational cost savings and enhanced customer satisfaction resulting from the tighter integration of the Contactual technology platform within 8×8′s services and network.”

Headquartered in Redwood City, California, Contactual provides small businesses and enterprise departments with an efficient way to improve customer satisfaction while lowering costs. Contactual’s patented OnDemand Contact Center decouples the call center from the physical constraints of on-premise equipment, empowering companies to deploy agents anywhere there is an Internet connection. By giving clients the ability to break their long-standing dependency on telephony and hardware, the Contactual solution lowers operating costs, improves customer and agent satisfaction, and speeds workflow through faster provisioning and advanced reporting. Contactual has customers ranging from Fortune 500 companies to small and medium businesses, and distribution partners serving the U.S, Canada, Europe, Japan and Australia.

“Today, many of our largest customers are already subscribing to hosted call center services utilizing the Contactual platform, and we are seeing increased demand for these services from our large, channel-originated prospective customers,” said Martin. “The Contactual solution has been proven in enterprise deployments with 8×8′s communications services for more than four years and incorporates a world class user interface, rich multimedia feature set and outstanding reliability metrics. With the complete integration of this offering under one software and services platform, we will now be more fully integrating these capabilities into our existing services, and also be able to build even more competitively priced call center capabilities for our small business customer base.”

In a recent Frost & Sullivan report on the hosted contact center industry, the market research firm stated, “Frost & Sullivan believes that the hosted contact center market is moving quickly out of the early adopter stage, with immense growth potential for the future. Based on our most current research, Frost & Sullivan forecasts overall hosted revenues to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 34.1% from 2009 through 2013. For small seat deployments (< 100 seats) alone, this aggressive growth is forecasted at an even higher CAGR of 41.3% for the same period.”

About 8×8, Inc.

8×8, Inc. (Nasdaq:EGHT), a pioneer in the development of cloud-based VoIP, video, mobile, and unified communications solutions, leverages its patented software technologies to deliver industry-leading SaaS applications to businesses of any size with employees in any location. We offer integrated business communications and cloud computing services that are designed to meet the highest levels of availability, reliability and scalability. Increasingly, businesses are finding they can reduce costs, improve productivity, and be positioned competitively for the future by choosing 8×8 for their mission critical, cloud-based communications and computing needs. For additional information, visit www.8×8.com, or connect with 8×8 on Facebook and Twitter.

Forward Looking Statements

This news release contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These statements include, without limitation, information about future events based on current expectations, potential product development efforts, near and long-term objectives, potential new business, strategies, organization changes, changing markets, future business performance and outlook. Such statements are predictions only, and actual events or results could differ materially from those made in any forward-looking statements due to a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results and trends may differ materially from historical results or those projected in any such forward-looking statements depending on a variety of factors. These factors include, but are not limited to, the possibility that we and Contactual may be unable to achieve expected synergies and other benefits from the proposed transaction within the expected time-frames or at all, integration of the operations of Contactual with our own may be more difficult, time-consuming or costly than expected, revenues of the combined business following the transaction may be lower than expected, our ability to retain key employees of 8×8 and Contactual subsequent to the completion of the transaction, the conditions to the completion of the transaction may not be satisfied, customer acceptance and demand for our products and services, the reliability of our services, the prices for our services, customer renewal rates, customer acquisition costs, actions by our competitors, including price reductions for their telephone services, potential federal and state regulatory actions, compliance costs, potential warranty claims and product defects, our needs for and the availability of adequate working capital, our ability to innovate technologically, the timely supply of products by our contract manufacturers, potential future intellectual property infringement claims that could adversely affect our business and operating results, and our ability to retain our listing on the NASDAQ Capital Market. For a discussion of such risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, see “Risk Factors” in the Company’s reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q, as well as other reports that 8×8, Inc. files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement, and 8×8, Inc. undertakes no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statement for any reason, except as required by law, even as new information becomes available or other events occur in the future.

CONTACT: Joan Citelli

         joan.citelli@8x8.com

         (408) 654-0970

Source: 8×8, Inc.

News Provided by Acquire Media

Earlier this month, there was the rumor about Telecom Italia offloading its speech services arm Loquendo. Then on August 13, The Washington Post reported Loquendo being sold to Nuance for $75.5 million.

However, as of the date and time of this post, neither Loquendo or Nuance has this information on their websites. The press release came from Telecom Italia:

Telecom Italia has announced the sale of its 99.98% stake in Loquendo to U.S. company Nuance Communications, Inc. on the basis of an enterprise value of €53 million.

The sale of Loquendo, a 2001 voice technology spin-off from Telecom Italia’s research labs with a workforce of around 100, is part of a process of rationalization of the Group’s shareholdings and a shift of focus toward its core business.

Nuance is committed to keeping the company’s headquarters in Turin, and creating a global centre of excellence in voice technology R&D and reinforcing its collaboration with Italian universities.

The deal is expected to close around the end of September.

Rome, 13 August 2011

So it’s official: Skype did not end up in Google or Facebook’s embrace; it now belongs to Microsoft, as CEO Tony Bates wrote on its blog.

I was hoping to see Skype go through with its IPO later this year as a master of its own destiny. A great company with a time-tested product, now we’re left wondering how Skype would’ve fared independently.

There’s a lot of techno-analyses on this $8.5 billion deal — the largest acquisition made by Microsoft. Will Live Messenger survive? Will Skype end up in Lync? Will Microsoft continue to support Skype on non-MS platforms (e.g. Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, etc.)? With this acquisition there will be many overlapping products, but Microsoft scores with owning Skype intellectual properties, especially in peer-to-peer communications — something quite useful for Microsoft’s cloud initiatives.

Some have questioned whether Skype itself will survive under the Redmond Giant, taking a page from history about the former glory days of Hotmail. Yahoo Mail and Gmail have pushed Hotmail into the preferred email service to receive spam and unwanted newsletters. Let’s hope Skype doesn’t end up in a similar fate as Hotmail.

My real question, however, is to CEO Tony Bates: What happened? Was the IPO pressure too great and the investors insisted on selling? They had the most to gain from the $8.5 billion sale in cold, hard Microsoft cash. According to GigaOm:

• Using the $8.5 billion price as the likely sale price, eBay gets $2.55 billion for its 30 percent stake in Skype. So in the end, eBay did make money on the Skype deal.
• Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, the co-founders with their 14-percent stake, take home about $1.19 billion. Damn, these guys know how to double dip!
• Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) own 56 percent of the company and that stake is worth $4.76 billion.
• Andreessen Horowitz had 3 percent of the deal and made $205 million profit on their $50 million initial investment.

I would think that Bates would’ve wanted to stay independent instead of getting sold. After all, he was formerly with Cisco and headed the enterprise groups, responsible for 80 percent of Cisco’s business and profits. Why would he leave the Cisco bureaucracy in hopes to enter another gigantic bureaucratic organization? He was thriving at the helm of Skype. Instead of reporting to John Chambers, now he’ll report to Steve Ballmer. Good luck with that.

To Microsoft: I don’t want to see a BSoD when I’m on Skype video with somebody, okay? Thanks.

The newswires are reporting that Alcatel-Lucent is meeting potential buyers for its enterprise unit this week in San Francisco. News of the company’s intent to sell first surfaced nearly two weeks ago. Possible suitors include Avaya, Cisco, HP, and Siemens Enterprise Communications (SEN). It’s said that SEN is considered to be the front-runner in the deal.

Some industry analysts and bloggers are picking HP to win it and arguing that a buyout from SEN wouldn’t make much sense. But there are also detractors. Dave Michels from Pin Drop Soup postulates, rather succinctly:

If It is cash then Cisco wins (who wants their stock anyway), and if it is a stock deal SEN wins. If it is not cash or stock, it is an IPO.

To me spinning off the enterprise business (which includes Genesys) would make the most sense. There are definitely growth opportunities for this part of the business, especially with Genesys’ momentum in the industry. ALU can partly own and invest in the spinoff if it wishes to continue to enjoy the fruits of the enterprise division. But the spinoff process is sometimes messy and perhaps costly, and it appears that ALU is really eyeing for a cash transaction of at least $1 billion for this sale, instead of a stock transaction.

I don’t believe any publicly-traded company whose core competency isn’t in enterprise telecom would want to touch this deal, simply because Genesys is such a big part of the equation. Cisco, having recently trimmed its consumer business in order to appease shareholders, wouldn’t dare to spend a cool billion on ALU Enterprise. Cisco shareholders want to see more sales of big iron data routers and switches, and new products to fend off cheaper competing products.

A buyout from HP may seem like a match made in heaven, but I think HP has more to gain as a mistress than the bride in this situation. It already has a good partner relationship with ALU Enterprise. HP thrives on partnerships when it comes to augmenting and supplementing its enterprise portfolio, but it will make bold moves such as the Palm acquisition in acknowledgement of its tablet computing failure (the HP Slate) and corrected the course with the Palm buyout. A lot of what ALU Enterprise offers overlap with what HP can already do, except in the contact center and IP telephony areas. With 2Q2011 earnings release coming up in less than a month, I’m not so certain that HP would stir the pot and go for it.

That leaves private equity firms and/or other private investors. Both Avaya and SEN are backed up private equity money, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Silver Lake Partners or Gores Group decides to expand their portfolio with ALU Enterprise. These equity firms have a track record of understanding and not shying away from enterprise telecom companies. However, Avaya hasn’t completely mastered the aftermath from the Nortel Enterprise buyout yet. SEN, on the other hand, is desperate for some traction especially here in the U.S. It’s no wonder SEN is reportedly the front-runner in the deal.

However this deal goes down, my hope is that it isn’t rushed. There are plenty of potential buyers and options, including for ALU to do nothing.