Interesting move from formerly Cologne, Germany based VoiceObjects. The company has decided to move headquarters to sunny San Mateo in very near future.

While I suspect the sun has played a role in that move it is surely more related to their latest 'turn around investment' by San Mateo based TeleSoft Partners. VoiceObjects has been a well known player in Germany's intense battle for Voice XML and Voice Automation market. As it has been the issue with many enterprise software providers in the last 10 years that set up shop in Germany, they all faced stiff competition from an over financed market that expected to grow like in the US but hardly ever did. Germany home of ERP giant SAP is no market for early adopters for enterprise software - user tend to invest little in technology there in the last 10 years. The enormous productivity growth the US has shown in the last 10 years where strongly related to ongoing IT investments - something that only happened in a much smaller environment in Europe and Germany especially.

Voiceobjetcs had a hard time competing with other providers like Mundwerk but managed to attract clients like Postbank or Deutsche Telekom for optimizing their voice portals (i.e. customer hotlines). The company has profited a lot from a partnership with SAP lately and landed the big new investment deal that allows them to do the right step. Produce tech outsourced (i.e. Germany) but develop specs and make sales in the US.

I'm curious how that will pay off.