Dive Brief:
- Connectbase acquired the telecom invoice and spend management platform Cloud Age on Tuesday. The company did not disclose financial details of the deal.
- The acquisition adds IT spending insights to Connectbase’s existing platform, which helps customers and partners transact connectivity. Cloud Age processes invoices from more than 1,700 providers, including network, data center, power, unified communications and managed services, according to the announcement.
- “Cloud Age has led the way in transforming raw invoice data into actionable insights and transformative outcomes,” Connectbase CEO and Founder Ben Edmond said in the announcement. “We are closing the loop — enabling our ecosystem to operate with speed, accuracy, and transparency from discovery to quote to cash.”
Dive Insight:
Channel partners use Connectbase to streamline connectivity sales: The acquisition of a technology expense management provider lets them comb through client spend data to identify additional deals.
“We see it as a way for the partner community to leverage TEM to open up the opportunity to upsell, cross-sell and increase opportunities to revenue,” said Bridgepoint Technologies COO Michael Sterl, whose company is a Connectbase and Cloud Age customer.
Enterprises, carriers and IT service providers of all types use Cloud Age to ingest invoice data to make smarter decisions about their spending on telecom and IT. The platform’s “spend intelligence” complements Connectbase’s discovery and quoting engine, which contains information for more than 400 providers and 2.2 billion locations.
“In a world increasingly powered by autonomous and agentic systems, the companies that win will be those that can verify, collaborate, and act across an intelligent, federated ecosystem,” Edmond said.
The deal moves Connectbase closer to channel partners. The company historically focused on enabling wholesale deals prior to acquiring MasterStream ERP in late 2023. Many technology advisors and services distributors used MasterStream’s serviceability locator to identify which carriers have passings through customer locations. Cloud Age provides inventory and contract tracking, which can expand sales opportunities. TAs can, for example, track when service renewals are approaching.
Sterl said Bridgepoint preferred Cloud Age to other TEM providers because of its pricing, flexibility and ease of doing business. Lags in product innovation have been a Cloud Age drawback, Sterl added, but he expects Connectbase to implement platform improvements.
