Vonage aquires cloud contact center provider startup NewVoiceMedia for $350 million in cash

To advance its strategy in providing integrated and cloud communications platform, Vonage has acquired NewVoiceMedia, a leading global provider of cloud contact center and inside sales solutions, for $350 million in cash. The acquisition combines Vonage’s robust Unified communications as a service (UCaaS) and cloud Contact Center-as-a-Service (CCaaS) solutions with NewVoiceMedia’s pure-play cloud contact center offerings, providing an end-to-end communication experience for a company’s employees and customers.

Founded in 2001 by Jeff Pulver, the Holmdel, New Jersey-based Vonage provides VoIP services. Its technology enables anyone to make and receive phone calls with a touch tone telephone almost anywhere a broadband Internet connection is available. Their unique cloud communications platform brings together a robust unified communications solution with the agility of embedded, contextual communications APIs. This powerful combination enables businesses to collaborate more productively and engage their customers more effectively across messaging, chat, social media, video and voice. The Company also provides a robust suite of feature-rich residential communication solutions.

“We are thrilled to announce the acquisition of NewVoiceMedia, which represents a major step forward in the realization of our strategic vision to deliver a differentiated, fully-programmable communications solution that drives more meaningful customer interactions and better outcomes for businesses,” said Vonage CEO Alan Masarek.

NewVoiceMedia was founded in 2000. The company powers customer connections that transform businesses globally. The leading vendor’s award-winning cloud customer contact platform revolutionises the way organisations connect with their customers worldwide, enabling them to deliver a personalised and unique customer service experience and drive a more effective sales and marketing team. With a true cloud environment and proven 99.999% platform availability, NewVoiceMedia ensures complete flexibility, scalability and reliability. Spanning 128 countries and six continents, NewVoiceMedia’s 500+ customers include PhotoBox, MobileIron, TNT, Lumesse, Qlik, JustGiving, Canadian Cancer Society and Wowcher.

“This acquisition accelerates Vonage’s growth strategy and leadership position in cloud communications, strengthens our presence with global mid-market and enterprise clients, and deepens our integrations and key go-to-market relationships with CRM providers, especially Salesforce.com.”

NewVoiceMedia is the largest privately-owned, pure-play, cloud contact center company globally, and is a recognized leader in the space. NewVoiceMedia is in the Leader’s quadrant of the Gartner CCaaS Magic Quadrant for Western Europe, and was included for the third consecutive year on the Forbes Magazine Cloud 100, a list of the top 100 private cloud companies in revenue, sales growth, valuation and culture.

Over 700 primarily mid-market and enterprise customers rely on NewVoiceMedia for a range of customer engagement use cases, from inbound customer support to outbound sales, including worldwide brands like Adobe, Siemens, Time Inc., FundingCircle, and Rapid7.

Dennis Fois, CEO of NewVoiceMedia, commented, “Vonage and NewVoiceMedia share a powerful vision to serve businesses with cloud communications that connect employees and enable personalized conversations with their customers and prospects. Together, we can help businesses create richer experiences through a state-of-the-art, global, programmable cloud communication platform.”

NewVoiceMedia will continue to be led by Mr. Fois, who has more than 25 years of experience in international leadership, strategy, sales and marketing in the technology and financial services markets. Upon closing, the senior leadership team and its more than 400 employees, comprised of talented business leaders, skilled technologists, and a strong sales organization, will join Vonage. Together, they will create an expanded customer experience center of excellence.

Together, Vonage and NewVoiceMedia will be addressing a total addressable market that is expected to grow 60% over the next four years to approximately $80 billion, according to IDC. Within this, contact center is a $9 billion market today, and with NewVoiceMedia, Vonage will be well-positioned to capture a healthy share of this opportunity with a recognized leader in the space.

“Vonage is acquiring a high-growth software company that brings a cloud-native contact center solution that can be integrated with Vonage’s existing assets to create an expanded enterprise communications software suite and, as importantly, 400+ customer experience professionals, deployed globally,” observes Sheila McGee-Smith, President & Principal Analyst, McGee-Smith Analytics, LLC. “NewVoiceMedia is particularly well-positioned to address larger-scale deployments due to its global scale and strong partnership with Salesforce.com. Additionally, the NewVoiceMedia team will be a big part of jump-starting Vonage’s attack on the huge CCaaS market opportunity.”

Vonage Holdings Corp. is headquartered in Holmdel, New Jersey, with offices throughout the United States, Europe, Asia and Israel.