Looking to bolster its IP communications software stack, networking gear
provider Avayaagreed to purchase audio conferencing
specialist Spectel for $103 million in cash.
Avaya, of Basking Ridge, N.J., said it expects to close the purchase of the
Dublin, Ire.-based Spectel within 60 days. Spectel, which has offices
stateside in Andover, Mass., has 210 employees and serves more than 500
customers worldwide.
Spectel offers on-premise, managed on-premise and service-provider packages,
including applications for advanced services, such as integration with other
productivity software suites and wireless capabilities. Moreover, Spectel’s
software is based on industry standards, which means they may easily
integrate with systems from a variety of vendors.
Avaya spokeswoman Mary Thiele said Spectel’s leadership position in the
audio conferencing space made it the first choice. It also helped that Avaya
has resold Spectel’s technology for more than four years and has used the
software in its own operations.
Avaya will bundle Spectel technology with its own IP
communications applications suite to provide businesses with expanded
converged conferencing capabilities.
For instance, if a company’s
loan processing software indicates that a contract has stalled, the
conferencing software could automatically schedule and launch a call between
the project team to resolve the issue, rather than wait for a series of
alerts.
Synergy Research Group said the market for converged conferencing, which
brings together Web, video, audio and data conferencing on an IP network, is
expected to reach $9.4 billion by 2008 as the demand for IP telephony, or
Voice over IP, blossoms.
IP telephony transmits voice as data packets on the network, which can make
the development of applications that combine voice and data information in
business processes more efficient.