BroadSoft Said to Close Sylantro Deal

It appears that long-circulating rumors of a fire-sale purchase of VoIP application server Sylantro Systems by its chief rival, BroadSoft, are coming true just before the end of the year.

Citing multiple sources, FierceVoIP reports that, “BroadSoft has tendered an offer to Sylantro for acquisition, and Sylantro's board of directors approved the deal earlier this week.” The deal is described in stark terms: holders of non-preferred shares and options are supposedly being asked to “retire” their paper for zero, zip, nada.

Messages to BroadSoft’s PR department have not been returned, while the e-mail address for Sylantro PR is defunct.

A former Sylantro employee who blogs at “Four King Beach” writes that in 2007, after leaving the company, “I could not see the market sustaining two competitors or either of the companies changing enough to branch into new markets.”

Last summer BroadSoft released an application-development platform called Xtended, where more than 1,200 developers are creating voice mash-ups within popular business and consumer applications, like Salesforce.com and Facebook, the company says.