Covergence gets new CEO
There are tonnes of VoIP gear in the enterprise networks now. If these enterprises start deploying SBC solutions, companies like Covergence could make it big. The company just announced new CEO, James Moran, who happens to have a strong background selling to enterprises (Moran was co-founder at edocs). Covergence has been supplying SBC solutions to both the enterprises as well as the service providers. However the vendor plans to increase its focus on the enterprise market.
The deployment mix Covergence has right now (service provider versus enterprise) is in the region of 80:20 revenue-wise. However, based on some of the large, global enterprises Covergence has struck deals with, it will probably be closer to 50:50 mix by the end of the year. Covergence website says 5 of the Fortune 25 use its SBC platform. One of the largest e-commerce companies also uses Covergence. My guess is amazon.com.
Covergence has about 150 customers, and about 30 of them are enterprises. The service provider customers are largely tier 2 and tier 3 companies that sell to business customers – generally hosted IP PBX.
A few years back it was fun writing about the SBC segment. There were various startups to write about: Acme Packet, NexTone, Kagoor, Netrake, Newport, Jasomi, Sansay, etc. Now there is just Acme Packet that makes a bit of noise here and there. But as compared to Acme Packet, Covergence is supposed to be getting more traction among the large enterprises.
Covergence was formed to focus on the enterprise opportunity, which might be emerging now. Over the last six months the vendor has won a number of large, global enterprise accounts. Covergence SBC features are finely tuned to enable the enterprise transition to VoIP and Unified Communications.
In order to deal with a mix of legacy and IP elements in an enterprise communications network, Covergence solution moves session policy − control, interoperability, routing, security, etc. − into a common SOA-based infrastructure which ensures that most real-time communications comply with the organization’s security, regulatory and business requirements. In theory that gives enterprises the control and visibility they need to move to VoIP and UC.
Covergence has also been an early adopter of standard hardware. The company has both ATCA and IBM BladeServer implementations. The IBM BladeCenter, according to Covergence, is much more popular with both service providers and enterprises over the ATCA implementation.
