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SIP infrastructure specialist Sonus Networks has moved quickly to capitalize on its $42 million acquisition of Network Equipment Technologies (NET), having already confirmed an integrated product roadmap and availability for its burgeoning enterprise channel.
Coupled with the partner-centric moves Sonus has made in recent months, the acquisition is going to set the company up for a full-throttle 2013 after a year spent building its team, program and portfolio, according to Todd Abbott, senior vice president, worldwide sales.
"It's the next step in our transformation from a VoIP company focused on telcos to one very much focused on UC and the cloud and reaching that through business partners and a channel program," Abbott told CRN. "It became clear that we needed to broaden the product portfolio."
[Related: Sonus Channel Program Targets SIP-Savvy Partners]
Sonus announced the NET deal on June 19, and the $42 million value was a roughly 14 percent premium on NET's June 18 closing price. At the time, Westford, Mass.-based Sonus said NET would add incremental revenue of up to $20 million during the second half of the year. The deal closed on Aug. 25, at which time Sonus officially moved 150 NET employees across three continents -- including its entire engineering team -- into its staff.
Sonus' specialty is session border controllers (SBC), whose popularity has grown thanks to increased customer adoption of the SIP infrastructure. The SBC market is expected to grow 26 percent year-over-year through 2016, according to Infonetics Research, which positioned Sonus as the fastest-growing SBC vendor -- expanding at four times the market average -- in 2011.
Sonus has hired a number of well-known UC and software channel executives behind a recent push to broaden its purview to enterprise customers. Recently, the company launched new SBC products focused on that segment, and its Sonus Partner Assure program, which went live in June, is targeted at enterprise-focused VARs and service providers.
At the time of the program launch, Sonus had 10 reseller partners, and it is intending to add another 20 to 25 by the end of 2012. NET resellers that had been active in the program at the time of the acquisition have been designated Sonus Partner Assure Authorized Resellers with the opportunity to qualify as the higher-level Sonus Partner Assure Channel Partners.
