BCM One Closes Pure IP Purchase, Eyeing Teams Migration Services

BCM One has wrapped its acquisition of business voice solutions provider Pure IP, as widespread Microsoft Teams migration continues at the enterprise level and more MSPs adopt white-label voice services.

BCM One, a member of private equity firm Thompson Street Capital Partners’ portfolio, first announced the acquisition of Pure IP in April. The purchase of Pure IP represents BCM One’s ninth such transaction. The New York City-based provider has added companies like CoreDial and SkySwitch as part of its stated goal of establishing a deep next-generation voice services portfolio.

In this case, BCM One is tapping into Pure IP’s international footprint. The purchased company maintains offices in the United Kingdom and New Zealand. But perhaps most importantly, Pure IP has built a reputation for performing voice migrations for large customers.

BCM One’s Geoff Bloss

“Pure IP’s expertise migrating enterprise customers from PBX and UCaaS platforms to next-generation platforms including Microsoft Teams, Cisco and Zoom are a perfect complement to the BCM One portfolio,” BCM One CEO Geoff Bloss said. “The global infrastructure and flexibility to design solutions from leading providers reinforces our leadership position as a next gen communications and managed services provider.”

Thompson Street Capital Partners (TSCP) managing director Brian Kornmann said BCM One has now acquired two companies while belonging to Thompson Street’s “Continuation Fund.”

TSCP’s Brian Kornmann

The private equity firm announced the Continuation Fund in December 2021. Private equity asset manager AlpInvest and other investors helped fund the program. According to Thompson Street, the Continuation Fund allows for the purchase of Revenue Management Solutions and BCM One. Their combined enterprise value stood at approximately $1.2 billion at the time, according to the announcement.

“A key strategy for BCM One, from our initial partnership in 2019, was to grow the business internationally and to expand our services to include enterprise customers,” Kornmann said. “Our investment in Pure IP achieves both while further strengthening BCM One’s service offering with key partners including Zoom, Microsoft and Cisco. BCM One continues to explore opportunities which provide for inorganic scale and growth through key product, customer, and geographical growth.”

The companies did not disclose the financial terms of the transaction. Pure IP took guidance from M&A advisor Acuity Advisors and investment bank Q Advisors during the deal.

BCM One chief revenue officer Mike Nowak told Channel Futures in a recent interview that the transition has gone smoothly for bringing together BCM One and Pure IP.

BCM One’s Mike Nowak

“They didn’t make a lot of odd one-off products or things that didn’t scale. So we’re pleasantly reassured of our assumptions that it’s a solid company. Going forward, we don’t have a lot of cleanup or product issues that we have to contend with,” Nowak said.

Migration Demands

It’s no industry secret that Microsoft Teams looms large before partners who sell voice and UCaaS solutions. The collaboration solution has been steadily gaining market share momentum. The widely used platform is putting pressure both on UCaaS providers as well as on-premises PBX providers.

Nowak said enterprise and midmarket customers in particular are looking to migrate to Microsoft Teams, and in some cases Cisco Webex. And Nowak said Pure IP’s identity completely fit those migrations.

And what do those migrations look like? Nowak said many businesses on the enterprise and midmarket side are starting with on-premised solutions like Cisco Unified Call Manager and Avaya. While some enterprises have deployed UCaaS, many of them have stayed on-premises.

Nowak said he has observed Cisco working hard to bring its on-prem Call Manager customers into Webex Calling. Nowak said sometimes those efforts succeed, but customers are “overwhelmingly” moving to Teams.

But that movement does not always …