US vendor buys Sydney developer Carbon Twelve

US telephony software vendor BroadSoft has bought out small Australian developer Carbon Twelve for an undisclosed sum.

Mike Tessler, chief executive at BroadSoft, said the VoIP application provider had approached Sydney-based multimedia developer Carbon Twelve and suggested an acquisition. He would not divulge the financial terms of the purchase.

"[Carbon Twelve] has been developing a series of products our carrier customers can use," he said. "We approached the Carbon Twelve team and they felt that to really scale up their business, it made sense to put it under the one umbrella."

Carbon Twelve had been a partner of BroadSoft for the past year, with most of its sales going through BroadSoft's channel, Tessler said.

"Of our 100 or so customers, 15 are already live with the Carbon Twelve product and more are in trial. We have the advantage of knowing the feedback on the product before we acquired it."

Tessler said BroadSoft had four customers in Australia: Telstra, AAPT, iiNet and IP System.

BroadSoft also had a sales, support and business development office in Melbourne, the company said.

Seven of the Sydney developer's team of nine would join BroadSoft and feed their expertise into BroadSoft's global R&D efforts. The remaining two staff were executives and would not be needed by the new company, Tessler said.

No decision had yet been made on whether the Carbon Twelve brand would continue. "We're working right now on a plan on how we're going to integrate the brands," he said.

Tessler said Carbon Twelve had shown "finesse" in its user interface and approach to developing voice applications for the desktop. Conversely, BroadSoft's team was "very skilled" in building functionality for large networks.

George Lawson, chief executive at Carbon Twelve, was not available for interview. However, he said in a statement that selling Carbon Twelve "validated" its business strategy.

"[Our] vision has been to invest heavily in developing world-class applications for the BroadWorks platform that have been deployed by service providers around the world," Lawson said.

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