And then there were three…

Great article. I was thinking the same and feel a combination of the three would be a very good challenge to the increasing presence of Huawei and ZTE over the next few years.

I am not sure about the supposition that acme is a third spoke nor is broadsoft. Acme I classify as the boutique sbc for enterprise solution providers where sonus has the carrier class nbs that hands off functions of what acme does in the same box to the core using the ims framework. BT pushing ribbit with it's 15000 programmers and Microsoft's comm suite will offer a robust feature set and an instant programming base. Throw in Lotus notes and Asterisk add-ons you have many variables. Don't count out Ebay to open skype into a standards base and Google to provide a server app for Android. This all falls back to the carrier being able to signal sip across its core and to all disparate endpoints - advantage sonus although without open interfaces at the carriers we will have a forest of silos. What does seem to be becoming a reality is ims as the standard for the future of Telco architecture which puts sonus at the top of the food chain.

I suggest you also add MetaSwitch to your list. They have more customers and revenue than Broadsoft, and have been profitable for quite some time. Although the cater to a different customer, you could argue that they are a more dominant switching supplier than Sonus.

This is the same mark_anthony123 that posts on Sonus finance message boards? Get a clue dude. Sonus and IMS is like an oxymoron. They're very good at what they do, but they do it in a proprietary fashion and everyone who owns their gear knows this, and it's not close to acme or any other real sbc. Sonus' nbs only works in a sonus integrated system, and only for specific applications, and that is their achilles heal. Every time we need it to do something different, they charge us and take eons to do it. Sonus makes their money with pstn gateways and class-4 switching, and that's what they're really good at. There's nothing wrong with that, and it's a lucrative and important role. But don't pretend they're more than that. I doubt there'd ever be a merger of any of these guys, because they all have ego's to spare. It makes some sense because they're each in some networks the others are not, so they could help each other, and they're in many of the same networks so could play up the end-end solution story too. But I truly doubt it would ever happen. Sonus doesn't play well with other vendors, while both acme and broadsoft make lots of money doing just that through integrator partners.

it's not an all or nothing prospect. Just as in the legacy market there are many players, there will be in ngn as well but likely a replacement of the guard. Having worked in tech for 25 years I can attest to the fact that vendors are not keen on making their gear seamlessly work with other vendors if they can convince their customers they should purchase full suite solutions instead. human nature I guess and not a crime nor cause to attack sonus. acme and broadsoft do not make lots of money, they are small companies and they play in a different space. eventially ims products will plug and play with others and in some cases niche vendors are already making conversion and interconnect products. it is important to not confuse enterprise voip apps with carrier intelligence products. The jury is out as to who will emerge as the dominant telco packet provider but folks like BT and many others have already made decisions on their core mlps portfolio. nortel still has the lead over all others for installed ports but as advertisers and content providers meld with telco the ims model may prove very worthy of offering a comm and open api strategy. smarts in the core, conversions, end to end signal management and five 9's is something sonus offers but I do not discount acme or meta for those that wish to piecemeal or cobble a cohesive solution. best regards to you mr. anonymous, i'll work on getting clue.

You might also consider adding a company like Taqua to your list. Solid product, solid management and solid growth. Neither Taqua nor Metaswitch are companies the size of Sonus but both are well on their way. At this point in the market I believe you have to consider that there will be additional consolidation in the switching space as there are still various competing products (Taqua, Metaswitch, Nortel CS1500/2000 and Lucent Telica).

All these vendors have 10 year old technology that actually brought about very little in the way of meaningful innovation to communication technologies.

I'd look at Amazon, Google, and Facebook rather than these cash strapped old world telecom companies...