Telstra buys into $45m Tassie deal with Inabox HCS acquisition

Telstra has bought its way into what is potentially a 14-year voice services deal with the Tasmanian government thanks to its acquisition of Inabox’s Cisco business.

The telco has picked up Inabox’s Hosted Collaboration Solutions wing for $4.5 million. The deal hands Telstra what was estimated to be a contract worth as much as $45 million over its lifetime if the state government exercises all its options to extend.

Inabox picked up the Cisco HCS business when it bought cloud and helpdesk outfit Anittel in 2014.

Anittel originally won the Tassie managed voice services deal back in August 2012, which was signed for an initial five-year term with three 3-year options to extend.

The service agreement was based on the delivery of Cisco’s UC call manager platform.

It saw Anittel replace Tasmania’s existing Telstra Spectrum endpoints, which were due to reach end of life in 2014.

At the time Anittel advised that the full financial windfall from the deal would depend on how many endpoints the state chose to deploy over the contract term.

Telstra will transition its takeover of the Tasmanian government services progressively over the next 12 months. It is already the largest seller of the Cisco HCS suite in Australia.

Inabox said the HCS business generated $3.7 million worth of revenue in FY 2016, leading to a profit before tax of $300,000.

The sale will allow Inabox to refocus its resources on the SME sector and consumer brands, Inabox said in an announcement to the market.

"The HCS business is government focused, and while we could have extended further into the enterprise market, this would have required substantial investment, resources and management focus," Inabox CEO Damian Kay said.

“Divesting the HCS business allows us to deploy new products that target our core SMB market, and consider new strategic acquisitions.”