Intermedia Buys Telax, Adds Cloud Contact Center To Its UCaaS Suite

‘It became clear we needed to address one main gap in our offering, and that was contact center,’ Intermedia CEO Michael Gold tells CRN about the company's latest acquisition.

Intermedia has added contact center to its repertoire of business cloud communications solutions.

The company has acquired cloud contact center specialist Telax. Newly combined, Intermedia and its partners can now provide an integrated communications offering that includes Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), collaboration and Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS), Intermedia CEO Michael Gold told CRN.

"It became clear we needed to address one main gap in our offering, and that was contact center," Gold said. "Now we have a more complete solution. We're thrilled with Telax's product and with the customer and partner base that comes with this."

Financial terms of the deal, which was unveiled Monday, are not being disclosed. Privately held Intermedia said the transaction will bring its annualized revenue to approximately $250 million.

[Related: Intermedia Launches UCaaS Analytics Platform Envision At Xchange 2019]

For Intermedia's 6,500 partners, contact center adds another lucrative recurring revenue opportunity, according to Gold.

"The price point for a contact center seat is a lot higher than UCaaS, so it's an opportunity for partners to move up and earn more profit dollars," he said.

In turn, the deal allows Intermedia to do business with more partners, Gold said. "There are partners that prior to this acquisition weren't doing business with us because we didn't have both UCaaS and CCaaS, and now we can meet those needs—especially for larger clients with sales or support organizations that need a contact center solution."

The contact center market in North America is expected to grow to $4.2 billion by 2022, with CCaaS adoption in particular predicted to take off, according to market research firm Frost & Sullivan.

Channel-friendly Telax has built its pure-play CCaaS solution on a proprietary platform. The offering includes interactive voice response (IVR), real-time dashboards and reporting, skills-based call routing and agent scheduling. The omni-channel CCaaS solution, which includes calling, email, SMS and chat, can be sold as an integrated UCaaS/CCaaS offering, or as a stand-alone contact center offering, Intermedia said.

The new CCaaS offering will be subject to all three of Intermedia's channel selling models, meaning that solution providers can sell CCaaS via a white-label model, an agent model or a co-branded model.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Intermedia does about 80 percent of its business through channel partners. Telax's partners will now join Intermedia's channel ecosystem.

Telax’s 40 employees have joined Intermedia and will continue to be based in Talax's headquarters in Toronto.