The deal, which was first announced in April, sees US company TeleSign, which offers two-factor authentication services to 20 of the top global websites, become a wholly-owned subsidiary of BICS.
TeleSign will continue to operate independently, BICS said, under its own branding, with current CEO Aled Miles continuing to lead the unit, reporting in to BICS CEO Daniel Kurgan, who becomes chairman of the TeleSign board.
Kurgan said: “We are pleased to have brought the TeleSign acquisition to completion and enthusiastic to add TeleSign’s deep pool of talent and expertise to the BICS family. This complementary combination accelerates several of our strategies for growth, including expanding our customer base, regional reach and product innovation.
“We have also broadened our expertise within the cloud communications development lifecycle, and will build and grow TeleSign’s established strong position in the fast-growing CPaaS and cloud security markets.”
In a recent report, IDC forecast the worldwide voice and text messaging communications platform-as-a-service market to grow from $867 million in 2016 to $8.2 billion in 2021.
TeleSign operates in the CPaaS space, providing mobile identity, account security, and cloud communication solutions to a number of top internet brands and mobile applications.
“We’re powering a fundamental change in the way businesses engage their users,” Miles explained. “Our platform enables developers to add real-time communications and security into their applications without the need for complex backend infrastructure.
“Now backed by BICS’ extensive global network and its direct reach to over 700 mobile and fixed operators worldwide – TeleSign’s trusted platform is in a class by itself in terms of global reach, network reliability and overall quality of service.”
With more than 130 points of presence worldwide, as well as participation on more than 25 subsea cables, and connections with more than 500 mobile providers worldwide, BICS can provide TeleSign with the global reach it requires, Kurgan recently told Capacity in an interview.
For BICS the acquisition provides a new working model that Kurgan claimed will allow the company to move out of the limits of the traditional wholesale model.
"We recognise that the traditional business and traditional customer – voice, messaging – for telcos is declining," he explains. TeleSign, he added, is a key component at overcoming this.
To read the full interview with BICS CEO Daniel Kurgan and TeleSign co-founder Stacey Stubblefield in the October/November issue of Capacity magazine, <<
