[VoiceOps] Alianza Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Metaswitch from Microsoft

[Ryan Delgrosso]

I would not place any bets on there being a holistic end state worldview 
attached to this acquisition vs it just being a metabolic process.

Microsoft had a hole in their Teams / SFB product. The telco side sucked.

They thought they could buy a telco vendor and fill that hole. The 
driving exec team would get to place a feather in their caps and claim 
they drew the proverbial sword from the stone and should each be granted 
their own kingdoms.

The Metaswitch ownership got to take delivery of gold plated dumptrucks 
full of cash.

Once the ink was dry a culture war ensued. Metaswitch wanted to continue 
sucking in their own entirely British/telco way where the end user 
carrier should not be permitted to do almost anything. Microsoft 
insisted they begin sucking in entirely new cloud/azurian ways. In 
response nearly all meta employees have exited, so there's now a 
disenfranchised customer base of orphaned carriers and no supporting 
brainpower, meanwhile all customers have felt the sword of Damocles over 
them the whole time never sure if their business would have a path 
forward. Many have already made other plans for product continuity by 
switching to other vendors or outsourcing their tech entirely.

The purges I believe concluded last year with most of the original meta 
team members being released save for a very select few who were offered 
roles inside the teams / azure org.

I think this sale is Microsoft selling the proverbial owl-pellet of what 
remains of its Metaswitch acquisition. I'm not sure what actual value 
Microsoft actually derived from this exercise but I am sure this move 
represents the final step of digestion where some loss/depreciation is 
written off in FY24

-Ryan

On 12/11/2024 9:51 AM, Alex Balashov via VoiceOps wrote:
>> On Dec 11, 2024, at 12:46 pm, Enzo Damato via VoiceOps <voiceops at voiceops.org> wrote:
>>
>> I think Microsoft's big goal with this was to acquire a working, reliable SIP and IMS stack. I would put money on the metaswtich technology being a big part of what's running teams and their other VoIP platforms in the backed. Now that they've presumably merged that tech into their stack, they have no interest in continuing to service the ILEC/CLEC market.
> You might be right. But if they had just licensed this from a major softswitch vendor like Metaswitch, or got the professional services / consulting arm of Metaswitch (or whoever) to do the integration for them, they might have spent a lot less than $270MM and without any of the drama.
>
> -- Alex
>