Melanie Turek gives her veiw on the AT&T acquisition of Interwise which is a provider of converged voice, video and web conferencing software in the same space as Cisco's WebEx and Microsoft's LiveMeeting. Also very interesting is the quoted Frost & Sullivan report because it says :
- Revenue for the North America for webconferecing solutions will more the double in the next 6 years.
- On premise solutions will also undergo rapid growth.
... In an effort to expand its IP business services, AT&T Inc. last week announced that is has agreed, through one of its subsidiaries, to acquire privately held Interwise, a global enterprise provider of converged voice, video and web conferencing software. AT&T will pay approximately $121 million in cash for the company, which will operate as a business unit within AT&T Global Business Services. AT&T expects to retain Interwise’s 150 employees, including its R&D center in Israel.
AT&T says the acquisition, expected to close in the fourth quarter, strategically aligns Interwise’s IP-based conferencing and collaboration solution with AT&T’s enterprise networking, communications and collaboration services, global MPLS-based IP network and its portfolio of conferencing services. ...
... The acquisition should help AT&T gain a foothold in the web conferencing market as a player in its own right, rather than relying on reselling services from WebEx and Microsoft. (What it will do with those partnerships remains to be seen, but clearly this move puts pressure on them.) ...
... According to the latest research from Frost & Sullivan, the web conferencing services and software market in North America reached $594.4 million in 2006 and is forecasted to grow to $1.4 billion in 2012. Although currently 85% of web conferencing revenues come from hosted services, Frost & Sullivan expects that the new generation of on-premise software applications is poised to undergo rapid growth, as software applications become easier and less expensive to deploy. ...
Source : Collaboration Loop
