Pure IP Buy Boosts BCM One's Global Footprint, Microsoft Teams Chops

Managed communications service provider BCM One is buying U.K.-based voice provider Pure IP to expand its international footprint and shore up its interoperability with Microsoft Teams.

The companies announced on Wednesday that they have entered into a definitive acquisition agreement, expected to close in June, pending regulatory approval. The deal, whose financial details the companies did not disclose, will bring BCM One’s total employee count to more than 500. It will also add offices in the United Kingdom, New Zealand and San Francisco.

BCM One leaders said Pure IP allows BCM One to offer number availability in 137 countries, a boon for channel partners who want to sell to global, multisite accounts. Moreover, they say Pure IP’s synergies with Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex and Zoom will help BCM One capitalize on growing market share they expect those three UC&C giants to get amid recessionary customer rationalization.

Pure-IP’s Gary Forrest

The acquisition marks BCM One’s ninth. Moreover, the company has used M&A to purchase capabilities across the voice and conferencing spectrum, including SIP trunking, white-label UCaaS and, in the case of Pure IP, public switched telephone network (PSTN) replacement.

“The BCM One and Pure IP portfolios are very complementary and will provide a compelling proposition in addressing the changing needs of businesses around the world,” Pure IP CEO Gary Forrest said. “The synergy between the two organizations will provide a solid foundation for future growth and benefits to our combined customers.”

Drivers

BCM One recapitalized under Thompson Street Capital Partners in 2019. Executives at the time said they wanted to tackle the next-generation voice services market, with an eye for migrating legacy-based voice services to the cloud.

BCM One CEO Geoff Bloss said the recapitalization occurred under a three-fold charter going forward. In addition, Bloss said the team intended to expand geographically, move into more “next-gen communications,” moving away from voice resale and more toward owning its own platforms.

He said his team met with Gary Forrest in the U.K. in September and quickly saw a fit between the companies. Bloss said Pure IP aided BCM in all three of its charter pillars.

Zoom, Teams and Webex

As far as next-generation communications goes, Bloss said Pure IP offered an “extraordinarily strong platform” for PSTN replacement services. Pure IP has delivered voice for Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex and Zoom.

Moreover, Bloss said the company played extremely well with Teams. For example, Pure IP has worked with Microsoft Operator Connect since the program’s inception in 2021. As a result, Pure IP has been integrating its voice solutions inside of Microsoft Teams.

BCM One’s Geoff Bloss

“The global infrastructure and flexibility to design both [Microsoft Teams] Operator Connect and Direct Routing solutions reinforce our leadership position as a next-generation communications and managed services provider,” Bloss said.

Moreover, Bloss said BCM One’s market research has led it to see the voice market moving further toward Microsoft, Cisco and Zoom over the next three to four years. Both channel partners and mid-to-large enterprise customers have reported that “recessionary factors” are leading businesses to consolidate their voice services into a single platform, he said.

“I think a lot of them are trying to rationalize their voice spend and voice complexity and trying to reduce … a mixed mode environment where they’ve got some voice services being handled – whether it’s cloud-based PBXes is or on-premises PBXes – and they’ve got the collaborative toolsets on the other side,” Bloss told Channel Futures. “I think more and more are seeing a convergence of trying to leverage the collaborative endpoints that they have in Teams, Zoom or Cisco WebEx and figure out a way to deliver PSTN services natively in those environments.”

JS Group CEO Janet Schijns said she’s seeing a similar trend of convergence.

JS Group’s Janet Schijns

“This deal further illustrates the fact that the UCaaS space continues to benefit from consolidation of smaller players into larger, channel-ready offers as the greenfield opportunities on the past few years have disappeared, and feature enhancement with platforms like Teams is where the industry is headed,” Schijns told Channel Futures.

International Presence

Bloss said Pure IP also directly improves on BCM One’s charter of expanding its international footprint. BCM One chief marketing officer Paula Como Kauth said Pure IP’s 137-country footprint adds credibility to partners selling BCM internationally.

“Our channel partners rely on…… BCM One to service and help them co-sell for those large multisite deals. This will position us as a global provider of those solutions in 47 countries where we basically couldn’t provide that in the past,” Como Kauth told Channel Futures.

BCM One’s Paula Como Kauth

BCM One in 2021 acquired Wholesale Carrier Services (WCS), which operated an IP-enabled voice and data network. It also offered network operations centers outside the U.S. Furthermore, Bloss said the WCS acquisition improved BCM’s international footprint by way of extra support.

“Through the acquisition and WCS, we brought on a wholly owned subsidiary out of the Philippines that largely we leveraged to be able to staff our support functions. So it was really time and manpower that we got from an international standpoint,” Bloss said.

And while WCS expanded the support component, Pure IP adds actual service delivery resources, Bloss said.

“We’ve largely been a regional provider or domestic U.S. provider, and now we’ll have the capability to provide full PSTN replacement services for SIP trunking for Teams environments, for Cisco WebEx and in Zoom natively in 47 countries throughout the globe,” he said.

Platform

While BCM One does continue to resell core network and transport service from the large carriers, Bloss said the New York City-based company has completely moved away from its resale business on the voice side. And Pure IP helps expands its portfolio, he said.

“Our focus has been to build up a suite of platform and services that’s capable of giving our partners and their clients the choices that they need to satisfy their voice needs,” Bloss said.

BCM One approximately a year ago acquired Intrado’s Flowroute SIP trunking assets. In 2021, the company announced the acquisitions of WCS, SkySwitch and CoreDial. At the time, the purchase of CoreDial represented the union of the No. 1 and No. 2 white-label UCaaS providers, according to BCM One executives.

“BCMOne is putting together a global portfolio that will truly resonate with the MSP and telco partner community because they can offer global footprint and Microsoft teams integrations which are now key particularly for the MSP community,” Schijns said.

Channel Impact

Bloss said Pure IP’s go-to-market strategy largely relied on direct sales, although it did maintain some relationships with channel partners. However, Bloss said Pure IP had been studying the channel as a vehicle for penetrating the U.S. market.

“They were relative newbies to channel in the United States. I think partnering with us is going to give them access to our full network of channel partners that we have, in addition to our small direct sales team,” Bloss said. “So they’ll have far greater reach from a geographic standpoint of being able to sell services domestically in the United States.”