Analysis of the Alianza Aquisition of MetaSwitch. What Does it Mean and What Does the Future Hold?

Sourced from NetSapiens, Author Jason Beckett

In the telecommunications industry, acquisitions are more and more frequent. It is important to look beyond the headlines to understand the long-term impact on all parties involved, especially their customers, and the future impact across strategic business-impacting categories.

Alianza, a cloud-native telecom company, announced they have acquired Metaswitch, a larger, premise-based solutions provider. This affects more than 1,000 existing Metaswitch customers, forcing each of them to evaluate the impact on their future relationship, with many of them deciding to look for alternative options as a result. The purpose of this commentary is to understand the risks and challenges both for existing customers and the company’s future success.

The story began on June 3, 2024. Microsoft announced layoffs that included most of the Metaswitch company. The layoffs were part of a larger round of cuts to the Azure for Operators division.  Microsoft laid off employees from sales, sales engineering, professional services, and software development. The key takeaways were:

• Metaswitch products are no longer accepting new customers
• Microsoft is not investing in new features for Metaswitch products
• Microsoft will continue to provide support and bug fixes for Metaswitch products

This left most of their existing customers in a state of panic as they believed Microsoft would support them for the long term. After months of uncertainty and unclear messaging, on December 10, 2024, Alianza announced a definitive agreement to acquire Metaswitch, minus a few key pieces of technology.  On March 4, 2025, Alianza completed the acquisition. The financial details were not disclosed. Beneath this announcement, every customer we have spoken to who has since become NetSapiens customers expressed serious concerns.

The stated goal of this document is to analyze the impact and review their open questions in order to better understand what risks and/or benefits might result, outside the hype of the announcement.

Ideological and Cultural Alignment

A smaller, cloud-native company (Alianza) announced they plan to acquire a larger, premises-based legacy provider (Metaswitch). This “reverse migration” is indeed rare and introduces significant cultural and operational hurdles. Alianza’s cloud-first philosophy contrasts sharply with Metaswitch’s traditional telecom roots, where many customers prefer on-premises or hybrid solutions. Absorbing a global company with a workforce and customer base far larger than its own will stretch Alianza’s resources thin. Doubling its employee count overnight—especially with an international footprint—requires rapid scaling of support, HR, and operational infrastructure, all while maintaining its existing business.

The risk here is that Alianza may prioritize its cloud vision over supporting Metaswitch’s legacy products, potentially alienating customers who aren’t ready or willing to migrate. This misalignment could lead to a clash of priorities, where Metaswitch’s established customer needs are sidelined in favor of Alianza’s long-term goals.

Product Strategy and Customer Migration

The tension between Alianza’s cloud-only model and Metaswitch’s diverse, premises-based offerings is a central concern. Microsoft’s reprioritization of Metaswitch—evidenced by layoffs and the cessation of new customer onboarding—left the product line in a vulnerable state.

Alianza’s promise to support existing Metaswitch products “for the foreseeable future” is vague and echoes unfulfilled assurances from past acquisitions like Cisco’s takeover of BroadSoft or Ribbon’s handling of similar transitions. In their press release of March 4, 2025, the migration strategy is clearly spelled out, “Alianza will continue to support Metaswitch’s existing product offerings while integrating its cloud-native technology into a unified product portfolio. The clear message is to, “turn legacy infrastructure into a modern communications platform…”

Forcing migration to Alianza’s cloud platform is the goal, but the feature gaps make this a hard sell. Metaswitch customers, accustomed to a mature, feature-rich solution, will find Alianza’s offering lacking. Historical examples—BroadSoft’s struggles with BroadCloud and Cisco’s challenges with Webex—suggest that pushing legacy customers to the cloud often fails when the new platform doesn’t fully meet their needs. NetSapiens’ flexibility in offering both perpetual and subscription models, hosted or on-premises, positions it as a more customer-centric alternative, which could explain why many Metaswitch customers are already jumping ship.

Operational and Management Complexity

The financial opacity of the deal adds another layer of uncertainty. Microsoft purchased Metaswitch for $270 million in 2020, and while Alianza’s acquisition price isn’t public, it’s reasonable to assume it’s a significant investment, likely funded through a mix of debt and equity. With commercial lending rates above 10% and Alianza already servicing debt from its 2023 $61 million raise, the cost of this acquisition could become a burden. These costs will likely trickle down to customers through higher support fees or reduced investment in legacy products.

Operationally, integrating Metaswitch’s aging software and global customer base into Alianza’s AWS-based infrastructure—while potentially adding Azure support—introduces complexity. Multi-cloud strategies can work, but they require substantial development and operational overhead, which a company of Alianza’s size may struggle to manage effectively. The knowledge gap left by Microsoft’s layoffs further complicates matters—bringing back talent is a step, but rebuilding institutional expertise takes time and money.

Reputational and Competitive Risks

Metaswitch customers have already endured uncertainty under Microsoft’s stewardship, and now they face a new unknown with Alianza. Rebuilding trust will be an uphill battle, especially given Alianza’s lack of prior relationship with this customer base. Internal power struggles are inevitable. Competing product teams within Alianza could muddy the waters, delaying clear communication and execution of a unified strategy.

Competitively, the telecom market is unforgiving. Providers like NetSapiens, with their flexible consumption models and robust feature sets, are well-positioned to capitalize on Metaswitch customers’ unease. If Alianza stumbles—whether through poor execution, rising costs, or forced migrations—customers won’t hesitate to explore alternatives. The Cisco-BroadSoft parallel is a cautionary tale: when support wanes and migrations falter, competitors thrive.

Implications for Metaswitch Customers

For the remaining Metaswitch customers, the acquisition presents a dilemma:

• Stay and Wait: Stick with Alianza and hope for stability, continued support, and a viable migration path. This carries risks of rising costs, feature stagnation, and an eventual push to the cloud that may not align with their needs.
• Seek Alternatives Now: Proactively explore options like NetSapiens, which offers a broader range of deployment and pricing models tailored to diverse telecom needs. This minimizes disruption and positions them with a vendor focused on long-term flexibility rather than a singular cloud agenda.

Given the historical precedent of similar acquisitions, the “wait and see” approach is risky. Customers who rely on Metaswitch for critical operations may find that delaying a decision only locks them into a less favorable position later.

Questions Left Unanswered

• Support Timeline: What does “foreseeable future” mean in concrete terms? Will support last 2 years, 5 years, or longer?
• Feature Parity: Can Alianza close the gap between its cloud solution and Metaswitch’s mature feature set quickly enough to satisfy customers?
• Financial Impact: How much debt is Alianza taking on, and how will that affect pricing and investment in both product lines?

Without clarity on these points, customers face a leap of faith with Alianza. Many have already made a move to a more predictable alternative, namely NetSapiens.

Conclusion

Alianza’s acquisition of Metaswitch is ambitious but fraught with challenges: cultural misalignment, product strategy conflicts, operational complexity, and competitive pressure.

For Metaswitch customers, the risks of staying with Alianza—higher costs, uncertain support, and a forced cloud migration—may be their future. A thorough analysis of each area of concern needs to be weighed individually by its Metaswitch customers, and each case is different.

NetSapiens is committed to providing the most feature-rich platform in the market. Further, it is specifically designed to support the needs of residential and business customers in a wide choice of consumption models, each customized to provide high margins in a fully featured UCaaS offering, resulting a unique product offering effortlessly delivered to its customers.

The full scope of the acquisition’s challenges will become evident over time. Every Metaswitch customer will need to decide if the status quo will be beneficial for their future success and is worth the risk. Others will realize the time for change is now.

GigTel’s Perspective
At GigTel, we understand how disruptive these transitions can be—especially when your communications platform is the backbone of your operations. That’s why we’ve built our offering on stability, transparency, and partner-focused innovation. As a proud NetSapiens platform provider, we’ve seen firsthand how its flexible architecture and hybrid deployment options give customers what they actually want: control, customization, and a roadmap they can trust. We work closely with every client to ensure their migration is painless and their future is secure. When other providers pivot for profit, GigTel stays grounded in delivering long-term value and real service—not just buzzwords. If you’re a Metaswitch customer wondering what’s next, we’re here to make that answer simple and smart.

Explore what GigTel can do for you at https://gigtel.com/partners/white-label