BCM One To Buy Pure IP For Global Reach, Voice Integration with Teams, Webex And Zoom

‘With the investment in Pure IP, the message clearly is if you’re a channel partner and you’re delivering PSTN services into collaborative tool sets, whether it’s Teams, Webex or Zoom, we’re the business to talk to,” says Geoff Bloss, BCM One’s CEO.

Geoff Bloss, BCM One’s CEO

BCM One, a provider of business telecom services, is continuing its buying spree with plans to acquire U.K.-based voice specialist Pure IP, the companies said Wednesday.

The purchase of Pure IP will expand BCM One’s communications portfolio into 47 countries, while giving the provider the ability to integrate cloud-based voice with the industry’s leading collaboration providers’ platforms: Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex and Zoom, Geoff Bloss, BCM One’s CEO, told CRN ahead of the deal.

“With the investment in Pure IP, the message clearly is if you’re a channel partner and you’re delivering PSTN services into collaborative tool sets, whether it’s Teams, Webex or Zoom, we’re the business to talk to. With the Pure IP acquisition, we’ve got a global footprint and we are a dominant player, particularly in the Microsoft Teams environment,” Bloss said.

The deal, once closed, will mark BCM One’s fifth acquisition in the past two years.

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Pure IP offers PSTN replacement services in 47 countries and number availability in 137 countries. The company’s specialty lies in integrating voice across existing communication platforms, systems and applications and Pure IP is an original launch partner for Microsoft Operator Connect, which further boosts BCM One’s Microsoft Teams credentials.

BCM One was previously lacking the capability to support Microsoft Teams via Operator Connect, Bloss said.

“That’s a far simpler mechanism to be able to deliver PSTN connectivity into the Teams environment [and it’s] a huge step up for us. … “[Enterprises] are looking for some way that they can leverage the collaborative experience that their workforce has embraced in Teams, but still get enterprise-resilient voice services from a provider like BCM One,” he said.

BCM One combined with Pure IP will give the company a process for overseeing global businesses’ migrations to Microsoft Teams, including presales planning, solution architecture, presales assessment, dedicated support resources and a managed Teams environment option, according to the company.

New York City-based BCM One is focused on what the company calls its NextGen Communications portfolio, which contains UCaaS, hosted voice, SIP trunking, managed SIP and voice-enabled Microsoft Teams. The next wave of opportunity in the communications space will be around helping enterprises rationalize their spend and simplify their communication and collaboration experiences, Bloss said.

BCM One channel partners are looking for what comes after selling cloud-based voice services, Bloss said. “You’ve got a client that has Teams and Webex and a cloud PBX solution. I think what this will provide our channel partners with is a road map that they’ll be able to use to migrate their clients interested in simplifying their infrastructure and making a move towards a single collaboration and communication endpoint, like a Teams or a Webex, and they’ll find in BCM One a partner that I think is going to be uniquely positioned to be able to help their clients manage that transition,” he said.

Pure IP, said Bloss, is a dominant player in the next-generation communications market.

“From our perspective, they clearly addressed a gap in our portfolio—that capability to support large-scale enterprises and deliver PSTN connectivity into Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex and Zoom,” Bloss said. “We knew that we were going to have to do something in that domain over the next several years and we felt Pure [IP] was the best opportunity for us … to acquire a business that was a clear leader in a market space that we want to participate in.”

Pure IP’s international presence will “step up” BCM One’s presence to that of a global provider, Bloss said. About four years ago, BCM One was pulling in about 85 percent of its revenue from businesses in the Northeast U.S. but the company has been successful in growing its footprint in the U.S. and now was the time to work on global expansion, he said.

Pure IP in 2019 recapitalized the company under St. Louis-based private equity firm Thompson Street Capital Partners. Pure IP is the ninth acquisition in total for BCM One, a company that is made up of a handful of brands today, including SIPTRUNK; Flowroute, which parent company BCM One acquired in 2022; and SkySwitch, which BCM One bought in 2019.

Via the acquisition, BCM One will add two international office locations in the U.K. and New Zealand, and a ninth U.S. office location in San Francisco. The Pure IP team will be joining BCM One, the company said.

The transaction is expected to close by June 2023, pending regulatory approvals, according to the two companies. The purchase price was not disclosed.