Razorsight, the revenue assurance software vendor has bought rivals Singletusk for an undisclosed sum. You can read Razorsight’s press release here.
It is another day and another deal for the rapidly-consolidating revenue assurance industry. Somebody from Analysys Mason said of the deal: “In the current challenging economic climate, communications service providers are increasingly focused on revenue assurance, network cost management, business intelligence and other aspects of business optimization. Razorsight is already a leader in network cost management. By acquiring SingleTusk Solutions, Razorsight strengthens their business optimization position with the ability to support revenue assurance and complex event analysis.” Note the weasel words: ‘increasingly focused’. This rather insultingly suggests telcos were not focused before. Does this mean telcos are spending more on RA and related activities? This must be the seventh year in a row that somebody has said there is an ‘increasing focus’ on these aspects of operations. One wonders when focus will finally attain a zen-like status. If telcos are spending more on RA and related activities, then Analysys Mason should just say that, instead of getting involved in talking up the market. Perhaps the reason for not talking about market growth is that growth is far from obvious from the modest sales announcements made this year.
Both companies sell similar products to similar customers. Both have their HQ in Virginia, USA, and both have operations in Bangalore. Integration should be straight forward. Beyond that, the synergy between Razorsight and Singletusk is hard to identify, and is made no less clear by the impenetrable marketing-speak in the press release. This looks like a classic amalgamation of two businesses that are direct competitors and which cannot afford to go head-to-head, so they cut costs and consolidate their customer base instead. Razorsight said they did revenue assurance before buying SingleTusk. If the purchase of SingleTusk means they now have the ability to support revenue assurance, it can only be because they were fibbing before. Of course, fibbing would be nothing new for Razorsight. Last year Razorsight was taken to court and forced to pay US$4.5m to TEOCO, in compensation for stealing intellectual property. That is one fact about this business ‘leader’ that should not be allowed to slip out of focus. They work in the field of business integrity, after all.
