Intermedia Buys AnyMeeting, A Web Conferencing Powerhouse, To Fortify Its Unified Communications Muscle
Cloud business applications provider Intermedia has purchased AnyMeeting, a provider of web conferencing, video conferencing and webinar services to broaden its fast-growing unified communications portfolio.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company, No. 194 on the 2017 CRN Solution Provider 500, said Irvine, Calif.-based AnyMeeting's capabilities would integrate into the Cloud Voice solution Intermedia currently provides. The 14-person company was founded in 2011 and has more than one million registered users.
Intermedia has, until now, licensed Skype from Microsoft to fulfill its web conferencing needs, but found that third-party integration opportunities were limited, according to Michael Gold (pictured), Intermedia's CEO. As a result of the deal, Gold said Intermedia will be able to tightly integrate AnyMeeting and will have greater control and management over its user interface.
"Unified communications is a big part of our future, so this is really the missing piece that we've now addressed," Gold told CRN.
The offering should help expand both revenue and margin for Intermedia's more than 6,500 active channel partners thanks to a broader set of functionality and integrated collaboration capabilities. More than 80 percent of Intermedia's business comes through VAR, MSP, distribution or telecom partners today, which is up from approximately 70 percent just a year ago.
AnyMeeting has until now expanded rapidly through viral and social promotions by offering a two-month free trial, according to founder and CEO Costin Tuculescu. As a result, Tuculescu said the company hasn't built up much of a traditional sales or marketing discipline.
Plugging AnyMeeting into a channel model will provide a much more expansive business opportunity, Tuculescu said, as the company shifts away from "freemium" services and toward business-grade features around recording and sharing PowerPoints and movies within a conference setting.
"We felt it was time to partner up and become part of that journey," Tuculescu said. "The stars aligned, and now we are one."
Integration work around the AnyMeeting portfolio is underway, with the first offering expected to be available early next year. Other features on AnyMeeting include screen sharing, presentation and video sharing, recording, and integration with more than 400 applications, according to Intermedia.
The first phase of integration work will focus on making AnyMeeting's available to channel partners through Intermedia's interface, Tuculescu said, enabling solution providers to resell the capability to end customers with just a few clicks in the online portal.
From there, Intermedia plans to focus on a complete technical integration around enabling one-to-one calls to become group meetings seamlessly and easily, without having to install any software, Tuculescu said. This will include integrations for everything from calendar applications to an internal contact list for everyone in the organization, he said, along with more easily facilitating collaboration on documents.
Intermedia said its largest product line would soon be Unified Communications as a Service, with AnyMeeting serving to make the portfolio even more reliable, flexible and scalable.
Terms of the deal, which closed a few weeks ago and was announced Wednesday, weren't disclosed. AnyMeeting's current services will continue to be available with no interruption, while the company's existing customers will benefit from additional investments, a broader product line, and the resources that Intermedia's 800-person workforce brings to the table.
This is Intermedia's first acquisition since private equity powerhouse Madison Dearborn Partners (MDP) purchased the company from Oak Hill Capital Partners in February. MDP is looking to scale the business through both organic growth and acquisitions, according to Intermedia.
Intermedia's voice solutions have evolved from switching services and applications for traditional telecom providers to cloud-based VoIP offerings after its 2013 acquisition of cloud-based voice service provider AccessLine Communications, Mark Sher, Intermedia's vice president of product and marketing for Cloud Voice, told CRN in August.
The company delivers 30 integrated cloud business applications from a single point of control covering everything from email, voice and productivity to backup and file sharing, identity and access management, and security and monitoring. Intermedia allows its channel partners to sell under their own brand and maintain control over billing, pricing, and other elements of the customer relationship.
Channel partners can receive online sales training, an automated marketing platform, materials that can be branded with the partner's name, online quoting and "concierge" sales service, Sher said in August. Intermedia also offers "no downtime" cut over, free onboarding support, plug-and-play phones, low labor costs and proactive network testing, according to Sher.