All views in this post are entirely my opinion and just a view on what m,ight happen.
Last year Silver Lake, a private investment firm put a bid in to buy Tandberg. This deal fell through in light of the economic crisis. This year however Silver Lake have confirmed their interest once again.
Silver Lake would take Tandberg over to make them private but if I'm honest, from a business point of view I can't see what sense this makes. Private investment firms often take over companies with the intention to re-structure their business models etc. Tandberg are in a good place at the moment, with good management and an excellent sales force. They also have high quality endpoints and infrastructure to boot. So from a business point of view they are in a really good position, gaining market share as we speak. Now if I might offer you an insight into what I think is actually going on... Silver Lake recently took over the network infrastructure company Avaya. Avaya specialises in IP telephony, contact center infrastructure and applications, and unified communications gear and appliances. To name but a few. A few years ago Tandberg also took over a company called Codian. Codian specialised in video conferencing network infrastructure. Tandberg have used the Codian team and solutions to their full advantage. Tandberg this year announced that they were taking a 'network centric' approach to video conferencing. I take this to mean they want to lay down infrastructure etc. As of Q1 2009 Tandberg have 51% network infrastructure market share within video conferencing. So now we are left with Silver Lake who have acquired one of the biggest network companies (Avaya) and are now looking to take over one of the biggest video conferencing firms who focus on network infrastructure and high def endpoints. I think Silver Lake are laying the ground work for the future of video conferencing. And by this i mean they networking side, what do Tandberg and Avaya have in common? Network Infrastructure!
It's all well and good having a load of fancy high def Telepresence systems but if they don't work in the 'real' world then their no good. We need infrastructure to make things work over the Internet in the non corporate world, this is where the money is. So while it might not make business sense for Silver Lake, it makes absolutely perfect sense in the 'bigger picture' way of things. If they lay down the network infrastructure in the 'real' world then every man and his dog will be able to video conference. This will make working from home a lot easier but it will also bring faster, better quality video transmissions to every one. Endpoints are affected by Moore's law so they will become better quality and more and more affordable in time anyway. The focus has to be on the network side of things.
I ask you all to watch this space as far as Silver Lake and Tandberg are concerned. We shall soon see whether i am right or not...
