With the NTP-Patent Legislation overhang gone, Research In Motion, aka RIM is finally beginning to flex its muscles and play to its enterprise strengths. It just announced Google Talk for Blackberry in partnership with Google. (It apparently drops Google Talk chats right into the Blackberry Inbox.)
But that announcement is quite marginal compared to RIM’s acquisition of Ascendent Systems, a company that makes IP-based systems for large corporations, and can integrate tightly with existing PBX and IP-PBX telephony systems to “push†voice calls and extend desk phone functionality to mobile users on their wireless handsets, or any wireline phone. No terms were announced, but Alec Saunders thinks that it will be more than $20 million Ascendent raised from VCs.
From a Voice 2.0 perspective, this is a big deal. “Essentially, Ascendent transforms the Blackberry into a mobile desk phone, with the capability to forward, transfer, conference etc calls,†Alec says. In other words, the big boys are still talking convergence - Blackberry is doing it.