Private equity, Mergers and Acquisitions, Mergers and Acquisitions, Content

PE-Backed Intrado Acquires UCaaS Company OnSIP

John Shlonsky, CEO and President, Intrado
John Shlonsky, CEO and President, Intrado

Global technology-enabled services provider Intrado Corporation has acquired Junction Networks and its OnSIP offering, a UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) and collaboration solution. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

This is M&A deal 315 that ChannelE2E has covered so far in 2020. See the full M&A deal list here.

Junction Networks, founded in 2004, is perhaps better known by its flagship OnSIP service brand. The company counts iHeartMedia, Codecademy, and Spacex among its clients.

OnSIP has offices in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The company provides cloud-based calling solutions to thousands of SMB customers in the United States, offering a replacement to traditional, on-premise phone systems.

Intrado Acquires OnSIP: More Details

With the addition of OnSIP, Intrado can now offer a fully-integrated product solution that spans collaboration, calling, meetings, events, contact center and messaging tools along with real-time support, professional services, self-service capabilities and a global reach, the company said.

John Shlonsky, CEO and pesident of Intrado, commented on the deal:

“OnSIP’s powerful technology is extremely flexible and easy to implement, use and support. OnSIP’s proprietary cloud-calling solution rounds out our product portfolio and will allow Intrado to better serve the communication needs of SMB clients. We are pleased to welcome OnSIP employees, customers, and partners to Intrado.”

Private equity firm Apollo Global Management has owned Intrado since 2017. Apollo paid about $2 billion for the business, which was known as  West Corp. at the time.

Apollo has been active in the IT services market. Key investments and ownership stakes have included Rackspace Technologies and Presidio, among others. Rackspace appears poised to go public sometime this week.

UCaaS Market Growth

Intrado’s acquisition is timely given the current state of the world. The persistence of the coronavirus pandemic has led to many businesses switching to a work-from-home model, leading to a marked increase in UCaaS penetration.

A recent study from Avant showed that customer interest in UCaaS has spiked 86 percent in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The healthcare/medical industry showed the highest growth rate, with the consulting and business services industry close behind.

Companies worth between $1 million and $10 million moved their phones to UCaaS solutions in 2019, while the study anticipated an average of 68.8 percent of companies will transition to UCaaS by the end of 2021. UCaaS monthly recurring revenue grew 29 percent in the 12-month period beginning April 2019, the study’s authors wrote.