Homegrown Sarasota area tech firm acquired (founded by NCF Alum Norm Worthington) for $437 million

A Canadian company has acquired Star2Star, a cloud communications services and software firm founded in 2006 in a Sarasota garage and now based in south Manatee County, for $437 million.

Markham, Ontario-based Sangoma Technologies Corp. acquired Star2Star, according to a statement. The deal, the release adds, consists of $105 million in cash and 110 million shares of Sangoma, traded on the TSX Venture Exchange in Canada.

Star2Star, which, like Sangoma, is in the Communications-as-a-Service sector, formerly knows as Voice over Internet Protocol, or VOIP, did $79.4 million in revenue in the 12 months ended Sept. 30, the release states. Star2Star’s offerings include a comprehensive suite of voice, contact center, collaboration, integration, video meetings services and more, with solutions that work on any device from PC’s to desk phone smartphones. Start2Star has about 300 employees, many of who work out of the company’s headquarters on Tallevast Road, north of Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport.

Star2Star co-founder and CEO Norman Worthington will be chairman of the combined company’s board after the deal closes, Star2Star President and Chief Revenue Officer Michelle Accardi says in an interview with the Business Observer. Accardi, who will remain with the company in a leadership role as well, says the deal is more of a merger, a “marriage made in heaven” of two peers that can now take on larger rivals together. Those rivals include companies such as Cisco, Citrix Systems and Microsoft. Sangoma, Accardi says, “saw the need to reach a greater level of scale to effectively compete in the marketplace.”

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