Wavenet snaps up Microsoft Teams player VIA

Communications player Wavenet Group has looked to bolster its Microsoft Teams capabilities after acquiring VIA.

Wavenet recently launched its TeamsLink service and is aiming to use VIA’s expertise in Office 365 and Teams to add some muscle to that offering. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

VIA is eight years old and started life focusing on Skype for Business, becoming one of the largest UK providers, but has been making the move to deliver similar levels of knowledge around Microsoft Teams.  

The plan is to also reach out to VIA’s existing customer base and offer access to Wavenet’s telecoms products and services. As a combined entity the firm’s have the opportunity to reach out to the existing base of 8,000 businesses and pitch a unified comms and collaboration platform.

Microsoft Teams has been enjoying a surge in popularity and back in November the vendor revealed that it had hit the 20m daily user mark, up from 13m in July. Given that an estimated 200m people are using Office 365 there  is still a significant opportunity for those channel partners able to pitch collaboration.

“VIA is an exciting addition to the Wavenet Group that brings highly valuable expertise and a passion for innovation that we are always looking for. Its combination with the wider Wavenet Group will accelerate our growth in our flagship TeamsLink product,” said Philip Grannum, CCO of Wavenet.

“VIA has been extremely successful in building the platform and management portal for their Microsoft Teams services and we are looking forward to integrating their brilliant platform into ours to the benefit of all our customers & partners,” he added.

In response, Alex Tebbs, co-founder & sales director of VIA, said that getting involved with a larger entity made sense for the business at this point.

“The acquisition from Wavenet is the next stage in this journey and provides existing and new customers with an enormous opportunity to get even more out of Microsoft Teams by leveraging the additional products and services Wavenet are able to offer,” he said.

“VIA’s unique management portal and service will be made even better through the integration with Wavenet’s Networking, Security and Technology services in order to provide the leading Microsoft Teams solution available,” he added.

Wavenet is no stranger to using acquisition as a means of beefing up its skills and back in September 2018 it looked to add some unified comms expertise with the addition of Solar Communications Group for an undisclosed sum.