Cloud-based unified communications provider Vonage to acquire NewVoiceMedia, a UK-based startup that builds cloud-based contact centers, for $350M
More consolidation is afoot in the world of cloud-based voice services. Today, Vonage — once a VoIP pioneer that today offers cloud-based …
Context & Ripple Effects
Vonage's $350M move on NewVoiceMedia lands in the middle of a consolidation wave it did not start: Mitel's $1.96B Polycom buy in 2016 and LogMeIn's acquisition of Jive Communications earlier in 2018 already showed mid-market communications vendors buying their way into fuller stacks. For Vonage — a VoIP pioneer repositioning as a cloud business-communications provider — a UK-based cloud contact center fills the customer-facing service layer its unified communications suite lacks.
The deal also sets up what came after in this coverage thread: Vonage kept buying capability, picking up Over.ai's conversational AI team and IP a year later, before Ericsson agreed to acquire the whole company for $6.2B.
First-order effects
- NewVoiceMedia's enterprise contact-center customers now sit inside a vendor that can bundle phones, messaging, and agent tooling on one cloud stack, while Vonage gains a UK beachhead and an installed base it did not have to build organically.
Second-order effects
- Rivals assembled through the same wave — LogMeIn with Jive, Mitel with Polycom — are pushed to match an integrated UC-plus-contact-center bundle or concede deals where a single-vendor stack wins on procurement simplicity and price.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward enterprise communications consolidating around a handful of platform-scale buyers rather than standalone VoIP or contact-center specialists — an endpoint the corpus itself reaches when Ericsson buys Vonage outright for $6.2B.
The trend: Cloud voice and contact-center vendors are rolling up into integrated communications platforms, with each tuck-in acquisition raising the bar for the next round of consolidation.