The idea of one of the tech giants taking on telecommunications in a big way has always been an interesting ‘what if’ scenario, and occasionally some small piece of it happens. Yesterday was one of those days, as Microsoft announced a definitive agreement to buy Metaswitch Networks.
Metaswitch got its start with the softswitch back when VoIP was the technology that would change the world, and today specializes in cloud native communications software with a continued focus in and around the voice and UC side of data. Microsoft hopes those capabilities, along with those of recently acquired Affirmed Networks, their existing Skype infrastructure, and of course their Azure platform can be combined into the next big thing.
As the reality of 5G edges ever closer, operators are looking to virtualize just about anything that can be virtualized. That’s the only way they see to scale the edge of the network successfully.
For a long while there was a divide between cloud communications and the rest of cloud computing, encompassing different talent pools and placing different expectations on infrastructure when it came to reliability, latency, and other characteristics. The gap between the two worlds has narrowed over time, and as this deal shows may no longer exist at all. Tech and telecom have always been intertwined, it’s just that now it’s getting harder to tell which is which.
If you haven't already, please take our Reader Survey! Just 3 questions to help us better understand who is reading Telecom Ramblings so we can serve you better!
Categories: Cloud Computing · Mergers and Acquisitions · Software · Unified Communications · VoIP
Join Our LinkedIn Group
The cloud capabilities of Metaswitch are oversold.
They only support VMWare and OpenStack.
Not a single mention here of what this will do to connect clients MS teams to third party external voice providers. Mark my words- MS teams is the end of the enterprise voice gravy train for the big carriers.
The largest of orgs deploying teams have already taken internal voice and video off their expense tab. Next frontier is external voice. MSteams calling packages currently stink, and the contact center. The contact center MS teams APIs are supposed to be released next month. They need a robots software platform to connect the cloud contact center providers and TF providers to these clients.
I don’t think legacy telcos really have grasped what is going on with metered voice yet. The last thing standing in 2022 will be toll free service that only our parents will be using.
They will in turn get 10 cents on the dollar through increased internet pipe sizes. Not the Cadillac, not the 2nd place steak knives. T VZ CTL’s metered voice days are over, CTL will have some serious blood letting over this. The other 2 have the 5G and wireless moat which MS teams still needs.