About AudioCodes

AudioCodes Ltd. (AudioCodes) operates as a vendor of advanced communications software, products, and productivity solutions for the digital workplace. AudioCodes has developed a range of software-based voice productivity solutions through its Voice.AI business line. These include the Voca range of conversational artificial intelligence (AI); related solutions that incorporate voice recognition; AI and machine learning technologies; SmartTAP 360° Live, an intelligent, secure enterprise compliance recording solution; Meeting Insights, an innovative tool for easily capturing and organizing all meeting-generated content; and Voice.AI Connect, a cloud-based solution that simplifies the integration of any cognitive voice service and bot framework with any voice or telephony channel to deliver an enhanced customer service experience. In addition to session border controllers (SBCs) and Voice.AI solutions, the company's varied software offerings include the One Voice Operations Center (OVOC), for network and device configuration, monitoring and management, the Device Manager for administering business phones and meeting room solutions, and the AudioCodes Routing Manager (ARM), for handling call routing in complex VoIP networks. In addition, the User Management Pack 365 simplifies user lifecycle and identity management across Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business deployments. The company supplies end-to-end solutions for the enterprise, contact center, and service provider markets, with a strong focus on accelerating the voice-enablement of Microsoft Teams. These solutions include AudioCodes Live for Microsoft Teams, a flexible portfolio of fully managed services for simplifying Teams adoption. Strategy AudioCodes' business strategy focuses on increasing its position as a leading communications software vendor of advanced UC and contact center voice solutions, voice networking, all-IP voice network migration, and Voice AI solutions for the digital workplace. The key elements of the company's strategy are to maintain and extend technological leadership; strengthen and expand strategic relationships with key partners and customers; develop a network of strategic solution partners; engage enterprise customers in direct sales effort; expand and enhance the development of highly integrated products; expand and enhance the company's solution offering; build upon existing technologies to penetrate new markets; develop and expand professional services and managed services offering; expand its investments in the Voice.AI space; and acquire complementary businesses and technologies. Solutions, Products, and Services Solutions Enterprise Business Unified Communications (UC) The company's enterprise business is driven primarily by its solutions for UC environments. Beginning in 2020, the company noted a clear shift towards UCaaS solutions as enterprises continue to migrate their IT infrastructure, in general, and UC solutions, in particular, to the cloud. The company's expect that trend to continue in 2023 and beyond, and consequently the company plans to focus on providing solutions that ensure a smooth migration to cloud-based UC and offer operational simplicity, high quality, and reliability. The company's efforts in the UCaaS arena are focused on a number of key partnerships, predominantly with Microsoft, who reported substantial growth in the active users of their Teams UC and collaboration solution from 2020 through 2022. The company expects its certified support for Teams Direct Routing, its growing offering of audio and video devices and meeting room solutions, and its additional communications software solutions (call recording, Voca Conversational Interaction Center, and Meeting Insights productivity solution) to continue to be focus areas for it as enterprises migrate from Skype for Business and other UC solutions, and adopt Microsoft Teams. The company's AudioCodes Live for Microsoft Teams managed services offering will continue to gain traction as enterprises look to streamline their UC operations. Consumed on a monthly subscription basis, AudioCodes Live for Microsoft Teams enables enterprises to benefit from Teams voice calling services without having to make capital investments in hardware and software and without the need for specialized, in-house technical expertise. In addition to Microsoft, the company builds up its collaborations with Zoom Phone and Cisco Webex. Contact Centers As contact center vendors turn their focus to cloud services, the company's approach is to engage with enterprises who prefer to undertake a smoother and controlled journey to the cloud at their own pace. The company works with system integrators to help those enterprises introduce innovation to their existing contact centers by modernizing their capabilities with technology, such as click-to-call, Work-from-Home agent access, and conversational AI solutions. Additionally, the company works with Cloud Contact Center vendors to enhance their offering and get listed in their marketplaces. VoiceAI Business Line As voice is the most fundamental and intuitive method of conversation, the company focuses on enabling engagement of voice and telephony to various AI-based applications and implementing voice-based use cases, leveraging on the investment made in AI and voice applications. Service Provider Business In the service provider market, the company's go-to-market strategy concentrates on outreach to small and medium sized businesses (SOHO, small and medium sized business (SMB), SME) with its VoIP gateways, SBCs, and routers. The company engages directly with service providers worldwide and supplies them with its versatile range of products to suit different business scenarios. This includes the ability to enable Microsoft Teams voice connectivity through the Direct Routing feature, which allows companies to connect on-premises IP-PBX and UC platforms to the cloud-based Teams service. Products Networking The company's Mediant family of SBCs, media gateways (MGWs), and multi-service business routers (MSBRs) is a line of versatile IP communications platforms that deliver seamless VoIP connectivity. The company's Mediant SBCs include hardware and software platforms that offer cost-efficient, scalable SBC, and hybrid SBC-MGW functionality (SIP to TDM, SIP to SIP) for enterprises, service providers, and cloud deployments. The company's software SBCs are cloud-native and deliver elasticity and high scale on all current major cloud platforms. SBCs are deployed at the border between the enterprise and the service provider, as well as between the networks of different service providers. The company's media gateways serve as an efficient junction between VoIP networks, legacy TDM equipment, and the PSTN. AudioCodes MediaPack 1xx analog VoIP gateways are cost-effective, stand-alone VoIP devices for connecting legacy telephones, fax machines and PBX systems with IP telephony networks and IP-based PBX systems. The MediaPack 1288 is a high-density analog media gateway for organizations that need to integrate large numbers of analog devices into their new all-IP infrastructure. The company's family of MSBRs offers service providers a range of all-in-one SOHO, SMB, and SME routers that combine access, data, voice, and security in a single device. These platforms are designed for managed data, SIP trunking, hosted PBX, and cloud-based communications services, and allow service providers to deploy flexible solutions. Applications AudioCodes offers a wide range of value-added voice applications to boost productivity and ensure a superior user experience. SmartTAP SmartTAP 360° Live is an intelligent, secure enterprise compliance recording solution for automatically capturing and indexing all types of internal and customer organizational interactions, including voice, video, and instant messaging (IM). SmartTAP is available for deployment in customers' datacenters and private clouds, or from the AudioCodes cloud. SmartTAP 360° Live integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Teams to record all voice, video, and IMs interactions for later-stage AI analysis and for meeting regulatory compliance demands. Voca AudioCodes Voca enables businesses to upgrade their calling experience rapidly and easily, by allowing callers to talk their way through an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) menu. By combining Voice.AI and voice networking technologies, the company's agile conversational IVR solution features advanced, enterprise-grade voice recognition capabilities that instantly automate calling journeys for both customers and internal users with simple, intuitive voice requests. Voca's out-of-the-box experience is mainly targeted at companies serving a large number of callers on their main line. For contact center partners and system integrators, Voca is an easy, go-to solution for adding conversational capabilities to existing IVR systems, avoiding the complexities of dealing with a dedicated speech technology vendor, reducing the dependency on professional services, and maintaining high sales margins. Voca enables a rich IVR experience in UC ecosystems by utilizing flexible hybrid connectivity capabilities with multiple telephony environments. Its multi-tenant service capability allows large customers to manage dedicated conversational IVRs for each of their sites, with easy role-based access for each site's administrators. Voca's marketing and sales efforts are growing rapidly in North America, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Caribbean and Latin America region, and Brazil, with plans to expand regional activity, mainly in the French, Nordics, and Benelux markets. Voca's key partners and channels include NTT, NEC Cloud, ScanSource, Nextpointe, and ETKn. VoiceAI Connect AudioCodes VoiceAI Connect extends chat and voice bot functionality to telephony communications by connecting bots to any type of telephony channel, thus allowing customers to talk naturally with bots for a voice-centric user experience. The company works primarily with bot framework vendors to enable and promote creation of voice-bots by adding voice and telephony functionality to their bot framework platforms. In 2021, the company extended the supported bot frameworks, including Microsoft PVA and others. The company also initiated collaborations with a wide variety of market players, such as speech services providers, bot developers, system integrators, and advisors. The company intends to leverage these alliances to create significant voice-bot opportunities for it, especially in the contact center domain. The VoiceAI Connect Cloud Edition is the self-service SaaS version or VoiceAI Connect Enterprise, and serves as a primary tool for exposing the bot development ecosystem to a wide array of voice-bot use cases via trials and proof of concept projects. Meeting Insights AudioCodes Meeting Insights is an enterprise solution designed specifically for the meeting-technology world. It captures and organizes all meeting-generated content, from team collaboration and training sessions to sales and recruitment calls. During meetings, Mia, a unique in-meeting voice assistant, takes notes, defines action items, and marks important moments, either by text or with built-in AudioCodes Voice.AI technology. Having made many user-driven product enhancements in 2020, the company launched a new early adoption program in the first quarter of 2021. Meeting Insights will continue to be promoted worldwide through Microsoft partners. Management and Operations AudioCodes' management and operations tools are designed for deployment within large-scale cloud or premises-based UC deployments. They enable the management, monitoring and operation of the entire AudioCodes portfolio, including SBCs, media gateways, Microsoft-specific appliances, and IP phones. OVOC is a voice network management solution that combines management of voice network devices and quality of experience monitoring into a single, intuitive web-based application. OVOC enables administrators to adopt a holistic approach to network lifecycle management by simplifying everyday tasks and assisting in troubleshooting all the way from detection to correction. OVOC's clear GUI design allows administrators to manage the full lifecycle of VoIP devices and elements from a single centralized location, saving time and costs. AudioCodes Device Manager is a powerful and intuitive lifecycle management tool for enterprise IP phone deployments that enables administrators to deliver a reliable desktop phone service within their organization. With the ability to deploy and monitor AudioCodes 400HD IP phones, identify problems, and then fix them rapidly and efficiently, AudioCodes Device Manager increases employee satisfaction and productivity and lowers IT expenses. Managing the dial plan and call routing rules of multi-site, multi-vendor enterprise VoIP networks can be extremely complicated. ARM delivers a highly effective, innovative solution to this problem by enabling centralized control of all session routing decisions. Through ARM's highly intuitive graphical user interface, system administrators can design and modify their voice network topologies and call routing policies from a single location, resulting in significant time savings. Time-consuming tasks, such as adding a new PSTN or SIP trunk interconnection, adding a new branch office or modifying individual users' calling privileges can be carried out simply and rapidly. Devices The AudioCodes 400HD series of IP phones includes a range of easy-to-use, feature-rich products for the enterprise unified communications (UC) service provider, hosted UC services and contact center markets. Based on the same advanced, field-proven underlying technology as the company's other VoIP products, its high-quality IP phones enable systems integrators and end-customers to build end-to-end VoIP solutions. The company's IP phone portfolio includes devices built specifically for Microsoft Teams environments with full Teams integration and a native Teams interface. The AudioCodes Room Experience (RX), suite delivers productive meeting room experiences regardless of room size. It combines a range of software and audio/video products from different UC solution vendors for effective voice-only conference calls and video-enabled collaboration sessions. The company's RX suite participates in the Microsoft Teams Room (MTR) program. Its RX products are certified under the MTR program which adds Teams to meeting rooms. Services Professional Services The company provides a modular portfolio of professional services to its partners and customers by delivering a complete voice network lifecycle model that is based on the three basic phases of Plan, Implement and Operate. The company's professional services portfolio delivers seamless integration, high availability, and vast scalability to meet business and network demands. Managed Services The company offers a range of managed services enabling its customers to deploy complex solutions solely by relying on the knowledge of its voice experts. These include providing its applications (such as SmartTAP, Voca, Meeting Insights and management applications) as managed services and a range of product-led services, such as managed SBCs and managed gateways. AudioCodes Live for Microsoft Teams AudioCodes Live for Microsoft Teams is a portfolio of managed services that removes complexity from the integration of Teams collaboration, UC, and enterprise telephony. It provides a seamless, rapid, and cost-effective migration to Teams for high quality voice and video collaboration. This fully managed service is complemented by devices-as-a-service, monitoring and management tools, and service enhancing applications. AudioCodes Live is also available through the company's global network of telecom and Microsoft 365 partners. AudioCodes Live Cloud AudioCodes Live Cloud is a software as a service (SaaS) solution that enables service providers to offer their business customers a seamless migration to UCaS solutions, such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom Phone. AudioCodes Live Teams Cloud includes all the necessary services for Microsoft Teams Direct Routing and Operator Connect, as well as Zoom Phone Provider Exchange, enabling service providers to reduce their initial investment. AudioCodes provides the voice connectivity infrastructure setup (SBCs), customer onboarding, user lifecycle management and tools for monitoring, reporting and analytics, to help get the service up and running expeditiously and effectively, with the service provider supplying the data connectivity and SIP trunk minutes. Sales and Marketing In parallel, the company engages with the leading channels, value-added resellers (VARs), and system integrators in each region, partner with leading application vendors and achieve design wins with system integrators and VARs in its targeted markets. The company selects its partners based on their ability to provide effective field sales, end-customer engagement, marketing communications, and technical support to its customers. The company markets its products in the North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Israel through a direct sales force approaching channel partners and end users. The company has invested significant resources in setting up local sales forces giving it a presence in relevant markets. The company has placed particular emphasis on emerging markets, such as Asia and India, in addition to continuing to sell its products in developed countries. In 2022, the company continued to enhance its field marketing efforts with direct touch enterprise engagements, along with channel recruitment and generic marketing activities, including tradeshows (mainly on a virtual basis), webinars, seminars, and online and social marketing. Customers The company's customers consist of enterprises (with direct and indirect relationships), service providers (with direct and indirect relationships), and a small percentage of OEM customers. The company's enterprise customers include a range of Fortune 1000 organizations, as well as smaller enterprises that use its equipment to primarily enable their UC solutions. The company's solutions are sold to enterprise customers through a wide network of resellers and distributors and the bulk of its business is carried out in a two-tier model in over 100 countries. AudioCodes solutions enable enterprises to smoothly migrate their communications infrastructure to all-IP UC solutions. The company's sales in this segment are based on two major business offerings: the traditional model, including equipment, maintenance contracts and, optionally, day-1 professional services, on the one hand, and a full as-a-service solution or managed service that includes the equipment, maintenance, day-1 and day-2 professional services, on the other. The company's service provider customers include a range of tier 1, 2 and 3 service providers that deploy its solution as part of their voice, UC, SIP trunk, or other offerings for their business customers. The company's solutions are primarily deployed at the customer premises and less commonly at the service provider core to provide connectivity and high-quality voice services. AudioCodes' broad range of products, broad functionality (SBC, media gateway, routing, multiple WAN and PSTN interfaces) and wide interoperability allows service providers to deploy its solutions in practically any third-party solution environment (for example, Cisco, Huawei, Alcatel, and others) and for a wide range of customers. The company's solutions have been sold to service provider customers in 100 countries, mainly through a wide range of distributors and some via direct sales. AudioCodes' OEM customers include vendors that leverage AudioCodes' technology and quality to deliver VoIP products and solutions. Historically, a substantial portion of its revenue has been derived from OEM customers that sold its technology products as part of their own voice solutions. In 2022, sales to Westcon Group, the company's largest customer, accounted for approximately 15.1%. Manufacturing Some of the company's components are obtained from single suppliers. For example, Texas Instruments Incorporated supplies all of the company's DSP components, while Motorola and Cavium Networks provide embedded CPU and network processors. Government Regulations The company complies with the European Union's Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (under certain exemptions) that requires telecommunication equipment suppliers to not use some materials that are not environmentally friendly. Research and Development The company's net research and development expenses were approximately $59.8 million for the year ended December 31, 2022. Competition Networking Solutions In the area of enterprise session border controllers, the company competes with Oracle, Ribbon Communications, Metaswitch (acquired by Microsoft), TE-Systems, and Ingate. In the area of low and mid-density digital gateways the company faces competition from companies, such as Ribbon Communications, Cisco, Dialogic, NewRock, Patton, Ferrari, and Sangoma. The company's competitors in the area of multi-service business routers are companies, such as Cisco, Juniper, Adtran, One-Access (acquired by Ekinops), Patton, Huawei, HP/3COM, and Alcatel-Lucent. Applications The company's competitors in the area of call recording are companies, such as Verint, NICE, ACS, Red Box, Teleware, and Dubber. The company's competitors in the area of Conversational IVR and Speech Attendants include, but are not limited to, Nuance, Parlance, and other contact center vendors which provide IVR solutions. The company's competitors in the area of applications leveraging speech recognition and conversational AI technology include companies, such as Twilio, Nuance, and IBM, as well as Contact Center vendors, such as Genesys, NICE, and Five9s. The company's competitors in the area of SmartTAP360 live, which focuses mainly on compliance and quality recording in conjunction with Microsoft Teams, include, among others, ASC, Redbox, NICE and Verint. The company's competitors in the area of Meeting Insights, which focuses on productivity enhancement and organization repository in the Microsoft environment, include but are not limited to, Avoma, Otter, and (at times) Microsoft (with Stream or Teams premium). Devices The company's principal competitors in the area of IP phones and meeting room devices are best-of-breed IP phone vendors and end-to-end IP telephony vendors. These competitors include Poly (acquired by HPQ), Yealink, Grandstream, Logitech, Crestron, VTEC (which acquired Snom Technology), and many others. AudioCodes Live for Microsoft Teams Managed Services The company's main competitor in the area of Live is the in-house implementation of projects (after buying products either directly or through an integrator). Competition is also exhibited in the form of system integrators, such as Converge One, NTT and BT, among several others, in various sizes, locations and specialties. History AudioCodes Ltd. was incorporated in 1992 under the laws of the state of Israel.