UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20549

FORM 20-F

Indicate the number of outstanding shares of each of the issuer’s classes of capital or common stock as of the close of the period covered by the annual report.

As of December 31, 2014,2015, the Registrant had outstanding 42,380,15837,841,603 Ordinary Shares, nominal value NIS 0.01 per share.

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act:

Yes¨  Nox

If this report is an annual or transition report, indicate by check mark if the registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934:

Yes¨  Nox

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days.

Yesx  No¨

Indicate by check mark whether registrant has submitted electronically and posted on its corporate Web site, if any, every Interactive Data File required to be submitted and posted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit and post such files)

Yesx  No¨

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, or a non-accelerated filer. See definition of accelerated filer and large accelerated filer” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act. (Check one):

Indicate by check mark which basis of accounting the registrant has used to prepare the financial statements included in this filing:

If “Other” has been checked in response to the previous question, indicate by check mark which financial statement item the registrant has elected to follow.

¨Item 17¨ Item 18¨

If this is an annual report, indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act):

Yes¨  Nox

Table of Contents

PRELIMINARY NOTE

This Annual Report contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, or the Securities Act, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act, or the Exchange Act. These forward-looking statements can generally be identified as such because the context of the statement will include words such as may, “will,” “intends,” “plans,” “believes,” “anticipates,” “expects,” “estimates,” “predicts,” “potential,” “continue,” or “opportunity,” the negative of these words or words of similar import. Similarly, statements that describe our business outlook or future economic performance, anticipated revenues, expenses or other financial items, introductions and advancements in development of products, and plans and objectives related thereto, and statements concerning assumptions made or expectations as to any future events, conditions, performance or other matters, are also forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those stated in such statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, those set forth under Item 3.D, “Key Information - Risk Factors” of this Annual Report.

Our actual results of operations and execution of our business strategy could differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, the forward-looking statements. In addition, past financial and/or operating performance is not necessarily a reliable indicator of future performance and you should not use our historical performance to anticipate results or future period trends. We can give no assurances that any of the events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will occur or, if any of them do, what impact they will have on our results of operations and financial condition. In evaluating our forward-looking statements, you should specifically consider the risks and uncertainties set forth under Item 3.D, “Key Information - Risk Factors” of this Annual Report.

PART I

Unless the context otherwise requires, “AudioCodes,” “us,” “we” and “our” refer to AudioCodes Ltd. and its subsidiaries.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

The selected financial data, set forth in the table below, have been derived from our audited historical financial statements for each of the years from 20102011 through 2014.2015. The selected consolidated statement of operations data for the years ended December 31, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2014,2015, and the selected consolidated balance sheet data as of December 31, 20132014 and 2014,2015, have been derived from our audited consolidated financial statements set forth elsewhere in this Annual Report. The selected consolidated statement of operations data for the years ended December 31, 20102011 and 2011,2012, and the selected consolidated balance sheet data as of December 31, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2012,2013, have been derived from our previously published audited consolidated financial statements, which are not included in this Annual Report. The selected financial data should be read in conjunction with our consolidated financial statements, and are qualified entirely by reference to these consolidated financial statements.

(*) Capital stock represents share capital plus additional paid-in capital, less, for the years ended December 31, 2011 and 2012, carrying amount of the equity component of the senior convertible notes.

Currency and Exchange Rates

The following table sets forth the exchange rates for one United States dollar (“US$”) expressed in terms of one New Israeli Shekel (“NIS”) in effect at the end of the following years (based on the exchange rate on the last day of each year).

The high and low exchange rates for each month during the previous six months are as follows (NIS per United States $1.00):

The high, low, average (calculated by using the average of the exchange rates on the last day of each month during the period) and closing exchange rates for each of the Company’s five previous fiscal years are as follows: 

Unless otherwise indicated, in this Annual Report all currency references herein are to United States dollar.

The exchange rate on March 20, 2015,25, 2016, as reported by the Bank of Israel, for the conversion of United States dollars into New Israeli Shekel was U.S. $1.00 equals NIS 4.053.3.842.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

We are subject to various risks and uncertainties relating to or arising out of the nature of our business and general business, economic, financing, legal and other factors or conditions that may affect us. We believe that the occurrence of any one or some combination of the following factors could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, cash flows and results of operations.

Risks Related to Our Business and Industry

We reported losses in 2012 and 2014. We may report additional losses in the future.

We reported a net loss in each of 2012 and 2014. We reported net income in each of 2010, 2011 and 2013.2013 and a small amount of net income in 2015. The majority of our expenses are directly and indirectly related to the number of people we employ. We may increase our expenses based on projections of revenue growth. If at any given time we do not meet our expectations for growth in revenues our expenses incurred in anticipation of projected revenues may cause us to incur a loss. We may not be able to anticipate the correct amount of expenses in relation to our revenue and adjust our variable costs accordingly. As a result, we may report additional losses in the future.

Our gross profit percentage could be negatively impacted by amortization expenses in connection with acquisitions, increased manufacturing costs and other factors. This could adversely affect our results of operations.

Our gross profit percentage has fluctuated in the past, including decreases in each of 2012 and 2013. Our gross profit percentage has been negatively affected in the past and could continue to be negatively affected by amortization expenses in connection with acquisitions, expenses related to equity based compensation, increases in manufacturing costs, a shift in our sales mix towards our less profitable products, increased customer demand for longer product warranties, fixed expenses that are applied to a lower revenue base and increased cost pressures as a result of increased competition. Acquisitions of new businesses could also negatively affect our gross profit percentage. A decrease in our gross profit percentage could cause an adverse effect on our results of operations.

We have depended, and expect to continue to depend, on a small number of large customers. The loss of one or more of our large customers or the reduction in purchases by a significant customer or failure of such customer to pay for the products it purchases from us could have a material adverse effect on our revenues.

Historically, a substantial portion of our revenues has been derived from large purchases by a small number of original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs, and network equipment providers, or NEPs, systems integrators and distributors. Our top three customers accounted for approximately 25.3% of our revenues in 2012, 27.8% of our revenues in 2013, and 27.7% of our revenues in 2014.2014 and 31.4% of our revenues in 2015. Sales to ScanSource Communications Group, our largest customer, accounted for 15.0% of our revenues in 2015, compared to 14.9% of our revenues in 2014 compared toand 17.8% of our revenues in 2013 and 13.7% of our revenues in 2012.2013. In addition, sales to Westcon Group accounted for 12.6% of our revenues in 2015 compared to 10.5% of our revenues in 2014. We do not enter into sales agreements in which a customer is obligated to purchase a set quantity of our products. Based on our experience, we expect that our customer base may change from period to period. If we lose a large customer and fail to add new customers, or if purchases made by such customers are significantly reduced, there could be a material adverse effect on our results of operations.

We have invested significant resources in developing products compatible with Microsoft LyncSkype for Business and related solutions of other partners of ours. If Microsoft or our other partners, such as Genesys, Avaya or Broadsoft, abandon their solutions compatible with our products, decide to promote products of our competitors instead of our products, are unwilling to continue to recognize AudioCodes as itsa partner or fail to achieve the expected growth of its solution,solutions compatible with our products, our results of operations will be adversely affected.

We have invested significant resources in complying with Microsoft’s requirements for the purpose of becoming a Microsoft recognized partner for their unified communication solutions for the enterprise market, which are known as Microsoft Lync.Skype for Business (formerly known as Microsoft Skype for Business). We have adapted some of our gateway products, IP phones, session border controllers, survivable branch applications, value added applications and professional services to operate in the Microsoft LyncSkype for Business environment. We believe that recognition as a Microsoft partner enhances our access to and visibility in markets relevant to our products. We are dependent on the users of Microsoft LyncSkype for Business to recognize the utility of our compatible products and purchase them. If Microsoft were to abandon Lync,Skype for Business, decide to promote the products of our competitors instead of our products, is unwilling to continue to recognize AudioCodes as a LyncSkype for Business partner or fails to achieve the expected growth of Lync,Skype for Business, our results of operations will be adversely affected.

Similarly, we have invested in the development of products and capabilities and achieving certifications for the solutions of other partners of ours, such as Genesys and Avaya contact centers or Broadsoft broadworks. If those partners decide to promote products of our competitors instead of our products, are unwilling to continue to recognize AudioCodes as a partner or fail to achieve the expected growth of solutions compatible with our products, our results of operations may be adversely affected.

Recent and future economic conditions may adversely affect our business.

The uncertain economic and credit environment is having a negative impact on business around the world. In the past, the impact of these conditions on the technology industry and our major customers and potential customers has been significant. Conditions may continue to be uncertain or may be subject to deterioration, which could lead to a reduction in consumer and customer spending overall which could haveand result in an adverse impact on sales of our products. A disruption in the ability of our significant customers to access liquidity could cause serious disruptions or an overall deterioration of their businesses, which could lead to a significant reduction in their orders of our products and the inability or failure on their part to meet their payment obligations to us, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our results of operations and liquidity. A significant adverse change in a customer’s financial and/or credit position could also require us to assume greater credit risk relating to that customer’s receivables or could limit our ability to collect receivables related to previous purchases by that customer. As a result, our allowance for doubtful accounts and write-offs of accounts receivable could increase.

We may need additional financing to operate or grow our business. We may not be able to raise additional financing for our capital needs on favorable terms, or at all, which could limit our ability to grow and to continue our longer term expansion plans.

We may need additional financing to operate our business or continue our longer term expansion plans. To the extent that we cannot fund our activities and acquisitions through our existing cash resources and any cash we generate from operations, we may need to raise equity or debt funds through additional public or private financings. We cannot be certain that we will be able to obtain additional financing on commercially reasonable terms, or at all. This could inhibit our growth, increase our financing costs or cause us severe financial difficulties.

We could be forced to repay our bank debt if we are unable to satisfy the covenants in our loan agreements.

In 2011, we borrowed $23.8 million, of which $19.9 million is repayable in 20 equal quarterly payments of approximately $1.0 million from December 2011 through September 2017 and the remaining $3.9 million is repayable in 10 equal semiannual payments of $390,000 from June 2012 through December 2016. In December 2015, we borrowed additional amounts of $3 million and 3 million Euro which are repayable in 20 equal quarterly installments from March 2016 through December 2020. If we are unable to make payments when required by these loan agreements or if we do not comply with covenants in our loan agreements with respect to maintaining shareholders' equity,cash balances, and liabilities to banks at specified levels or achieving certain levels of operating income, we could be required to repay all or a portion of these bank loans prior to their maturity.maturity date.

We may expand our business through acquisitions that could result in diversion of resources and extra expenses. This could disrupt our business and affect our results of operations.

Part of our strategy is to pursue acquisitions of, or investments in, businesses and technologies or to establish joint ventures to expand our business. The negotiation of acquisitions, investments or joint ventures, as well as the integration of acquired or jointly developed businesses or technologies, could divert our management’s time and resources. Acquired businesses, technologies or joint ventures may not be successfully integrated with our products and operations. The markets for the products produced by the companies we acquire may take longer than we anticipated to develop and to result in increased sales and profits for us. We may not realize the intended benefits of any acquisition, investment or joint venture and we may incur losses from any acquisition, investment or joint venture.

Acquisitions could result in: 

If acquisitions disrupt our sales or marketing efforts or operations, our business may suffer.

If new products we introduce or expect to introduce in the future fail to generate the level of demand we anticipated, we will realize a lower than expected return from our investment in research and development with respect to those products, and our results of operations may suffer.

Our success is dependent, in part, on the willingness of our customers to transition or migrate to new products, such as our expanded offering of Mediant and IP media products, our residential gateways, our session border controller products, our multi service business routers (MSBRs), our software solutions and value added application products, our services or expected future products. We are involved in a continuous process of evaluating changing market demands and customer requirements in order to develop and introduce new products, features and applications to meet changing demands and requirements. We need to be able to interpret market trends and the advancement of technology in order to successfully develop and introduce new products, features and applications. If potential customers defer transition or migration to new products, our return on our investment in research and development with respect to products recently introduced or expected to be introduced in the near future will be lower than we originally anticipated and our results of operations may suffer.

Because of the rapid technological development in the communications equipment market and the intense competition we face, our products can become outmoded or obsolete in a relatively short period of time, which requires us to provide frequent updates and/or replacements to existing products. If we do not successfully manage the transition process to the next generation of our products, our operating results may be harmed.

The communications equipment market is characterized by rapid technological innovation and intense competition. Accordingly, our success depends in part on our ability to develop next generation products in a timely and cost-effective manner. The development of new products is expensive, complex and time consuming. If we do not rapidly develop our next generation products ahead of our competitors, we may lose both existing and potential customers to our competitors. Further, if a competitor develops a new, less expensive product using a different technological approach to delivering informational services over existing networks, our products would no longer be competitive. Conversely, even if we are successful in rapidly developing new products ahead of our competitors, andif we do not cost-effectively manage our inventory levels of existing products when making the transition to the new products, our financial results could be negatively affected by high levels of obsolete inventory. If any of the foregoing were to occur, then our operating results would be harmed.

Our industry is rapidly evolving and we may not be able to keep pace with technological changes, which could adversely affect our business.

The transmission of multimedia over data networks is rapidly evolving. Short product life cycles place a premium on our ability to manage the transition from current products to new products. Our future success in generating revenues will depend on our ability to enhance our existing products and to develop and introduce new products and product features. These products and features must keep pace with technological developments and address the increasingly sophisticated needs of our customers. The development of new technologies and products is increasingly complex and uncertain. This increases the difficulty in coordinating the planning and production process and can result in delay in the introduction of new technologies and products.

The increase in the number of IP networks may adversely affect the demand for media gateway products.

Media gateway products are primarily intended to transcode voice from traditional telephony networks to IP networks and vice versa. Along with the growth in the number of IP networks, there has been an increase in the amount of information that is sent directly from one IP network to another IP network. This direct network communication potentially obviates the need to use a media gateway or transcoding. A reduction in the demand for media gateways may adversely affect the demand for our media gateway products and, in turn, adversely affect our results of operations.

The ongoing transition to the use of cloud-based software could adversely affect us.

The use of cloud-based software as a service (“SaaS”) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted in the cloud. Recently, our partners have started adopting this model. For example, Microsoft announced Skype for Business cloud PBX in November 2015 and is encouraging business customers to use that model instead of the on premises alternative. Currently, our revenue is generated primarily from on premises deployments. The transition to cloud-based delivery impacts the architecture and role of our products in the overall solution. We may not succeed in transitioning in time or at all to the new technologies, products, solutions and services adopted by our partners and their customers. We may not succeed in aligning our solutions with our partners’ solutions and be unable to bring sufficient value to them or their end customers. Our inability to adapt to the ongoing transition to the use of cloud- based software could have an adverse effect on us.

New industry standards, the modification of our products to meet additional existing standards or the addition of features to our products may delay the introduction of our products or increase our costs.

The industry standards that apply to our products are continually evolving.In addition, since our products are integrated into networks consisting of elements manufactured by various companies, they must comply with a number of industry standards and practices established by various international bodies and industry forums. Should new standards gain broad acceptance, we will be required to adopt those standards in our products. We may also decide to modify our products to meet additional existing standards or add features to our products. Standards may be adopted by various industry interest groups or may be proprietary and nonetheless accepted broadly in the industry. It may take us a significant amount of time to develop and design products incorporating these new standards.

Our OEM customers or potential customers or partners may develop or prefer to develop their own technical solutions, or purchase third party technology, and as a result, would not buy our products.

Our products are sold also as components or building blocks to large OEMs and NEPs. These customers incorporate our products into their product offerings, usually in conjunction with value-added services of their own or of third parties. OEM or NEP customers or potential customers may prefer to develop their own technology or purchase third party technology. They could also manufacture their own components or building blocks that are similar to the ones we offer. Large customers have already committed significant resources in developing integrated product offerings. Customers may decide that this gives them better profitability and/or greater control over supplies, specifications and performance. Customers may therefore not buy components or products from an external manufacturer such as us. This could have an adverse impact on our ability to sell our products and our revenues.

We have a limited order backlog. If revenue levels for any quarter fall below our expectations, our results of operations will be adversely affected.

We have a limited order backlog, which makes revenues in any quarter substantially dependent on orders received and delivered in that quarter. A delay in the recognition of revenue, even from one customer, may have a significant negative impact on our results of operations for a given period. We base our decisions regarding our operating expenses on anticipated revenue trends, and our expense levels are relatively fixed, or require some time for adjustment. Because only a small portion of our expenses varies with our revenues, if revenue levels fall below our expectations, our results of operations will be adversely affected.

Generally, we sell to original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs, network equipment providers or system integrator customers, as well as to distributors. As a result, we have less information with respect to the actual requirements of end-users and their utilization of equipment. We also have less influence over the choice of equipment by these end-users.

We typically sell to OEM customers, network equipment providers, and system integrators, as well as to distributors. Our customers usually purchase equipment from several suppliers and may be trying to fulfill one of their customers’ specific technical specifications. We rely heavily on our customers for sales of our products and to inform us about market trends and the needs of their customers. We cannot be certain that this information is accurate. If the information we receive is not accurate, we may be manufacturing products that do not have afor which no customer demand exists or fail to manufacture products that end-users want. Because we are selling products to OEMs, system integrators and distributors rather than directly to end-users, we have less control over the ultimate selection of products by end-users.

The markets we serve are highly competitive and many of our competitors have much greater resources,competitive advantages over us, which may make it difficult for us to maintain profitability.

Competition in our industry is intense and we expect competition to increase in the future. Our competitors currently sell products that provide similar benefits to those of the products that we sell. There hashave been a significant amountnumber of mergermergers and acquisition activityacquisitions and strategic alliances, frequently involving major telecommunications equipment manufacturers acquiring smaller companies, and we expect that this will result in an increasing concentration of market share among these companies, many of whom are our customers.

Our principal competitors in the area of analog media gateways (2 to 24 ports) for access and enterprise are Grandstream, Natex, Iskratel, Zyxel, Adtran, , Media5, Cisco, Sangoma, Innovaphone AG, Patton, Dialogic and Edgewater.

In the area of low and mid density digital gateways we face competition from companies such as Sonus Networks, Huawei, Cisco, Dialogic, Genband, Edgewater, Patton, Ferrari and Sangoma.

Our competitors in the area of multi service business routersMSBRs are companies such as Cisco, Juniper, Adtran, One-Access, Patton, Huawei, HP/3COM and Alcatel-Lucent.

Specifically in the area of enterprise class session border controller technology we compete with ACME Packet (acquired by Oracle), Cisco, SIPera (acquired by Avaya), Sonus Networks, NET (acquired by Sonus Networks), Ingate and Edgewater.

Our competitors in the Microsoft LyncSkype for Business certified gateways, session border controller, , Survivable Branch Appliance and IP Phone markets include NET (acquired by Sonus Networks), Dialogic, Cisco, Ferrari, ACME Packet (acquired by Oracle) Polycom Snom, Yealink, Patton and HP.

Some of our competitors are also customers of our products and technologies.

Our principal competitors in the residential gateway market are Fritzbox, Technicolor, Cisco, ADB Global, Sagemcom, ZyXEL, Netgear, Bewan (Pace), Huawei and ZTE .ZTE.

Our principal competitors in the sale of signal processing chips are Broadcom, Octasic and Mindspeed. Other indirect competition is arriving froma result of the integration of VoIP functionality into processors (running VoIP signal processing on generic ARM/MIPS cores), thus decreasing the need for dedicated signal processing chips in the VoIP product. Examples of such manufacturers are Cavium and Texas Instruments. Our principal competitors in the communications board market are Dialogic, Sangoma and PIKA Technologies.

Our principal competitors in the area of IP Phones are comprised of “best-of-breed” IP phone vendors and end-to-end IP telephony vendors. “Best of breed” IP phone vendors sell standard-basedstandards-based SIP phones that can be integrated into any standards-based IP-PBX or hosted IP telephony system. These competitors include Polycom, HP, Grandstream, Yealink and SNOM. End-to-end IP telephony vendors sell IP phones that only work in their proprietary systems. These competitors include Cisco, Avaya, Alcatel-Lucent, Siemens, Aastra (acquired by Mitel) and NEC.

Some of our competitors are also customers of our products and technologies.

Many of our competitors have the ability to offer complete network solutions and vendor-sponsored financing programs to prospective customers. Some of our competitors with broad product portfolios may also be able to offer lower prices on products that compete with ours because of their ability to recoup a loss of margin through sales of other products or services. Additionally, voice, audio and other communications alternatives that compete with our products are being continually introduced.

In the future, we may also develop and introduce other products with new or additional telecommunications capabilities or services. As a result, we may compete directly with VoIP companies and other telecommunications and solution infrastructure providers, some of which may be our customers. Additional competitors may include companies that currently provide communication software products and services. The ability of some of our competitors to bundle other enhanced services or complete solutions with VoIP products could give these competitors an advantage over us.

Offering to sell system level products that compete with the products manufactured by our customers could negatively affect our business.

Our product offerings range from media gateway building blocks, such as chips and boards, to media gateways, media servers and session border control products (systems). These products could compete with products offered by our customers. These customers could decide to decrease purchases from us because of this competition. This could result in a material adverse effect on our results of operations.

Offering to sell directly to carriers or service providers may expose us to requirements for service which we may not be able to meet.

We also sell our products directly to telecommunications carriers, service providers or other end-users. We have traditionally relied on third party distributors and OEMs to test and/or sell our products and to inform us about the requirements of end-users. We have limited experience selling our products directly to end-user customers. Telecommunications carriers and other service providers have great bargaining power in negotiating contracts. Generally, contracts with end-users tend to be more complex and impose more obligations on us than contracts with third party distributors. We may be unable to meet the requirements of these contracts. If we are unable to meet the conditions of a contract with an end-user customer, we may be subjectrequired to pay liquidated damages or become subject to liabilities that could result in a material adverse effect on our results of operations.

Selling directly to end-users may adversely affect our relationship with our current third party distributors upon whom we will continue to rely for a significant portion of our sales. Loss of third party distributors and OEMs, or a decreased commitment by them to sell our products as a result of direct sales by us, could adversely affect our sales and results of operations.

We rely on third-party subcontractors to assemble and original design manufacturers to design and manufacture some of our products, and therefore do not directly control manufacturing costs, product delivery schedules or manufacturing quality.

Our products are assembled and tested by third-party subcontractors. As a result of our reliance on third-party subcontractors, we cannot directly control product delivery schedules. We have in the past experienced delays in delivery schedules. Any problems that occur and persist in connection with the delivery, quality or cost of the assembly and testing of our products could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations. This reliance could also lead to product shortages or quality assurance problems, which, in turn, could lead to an increase in the costs of manufacturing or assembling our products.

In addition, we have engaged several original design manufacturers, or ODMs, based in Asia to design and manufacture some of our products and may engage additional ODMs in the future. Any problems that occur and persist in connection with the delivery, quality, cost of the assembly or testing of our products, as well as the termination of our commercial relationship with an ODM or the discontinuance of the manufacturing of the respective products could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

WeIf a small number of third-party suppliers do not provide us with key components on a timely basis, we may not be able to deliver our products to our customers, and substantial reengineering costs may be incurred if a small number of third-party suppliers do not provide us with key components on a timely basis.incurred.

Texas Instruments Incorporated supplies all of the chips for our signal processor product line. Our signal processor line is used both as a product line in its own right and as a key component in our other product lines. Motorola and Cavium Networks manufacture all of the communications and network processors currently used onin our embedded communications boards and network products.

We have not entered into any long-term supply agreements or alternate source agreements with our suppliers and, while we maintain an inventory of critical components, our inventory of chips would likely not be sufficient in the event that we had to engage an alternate supplier for these components.

An unexpected termination of the supply of the chips provided by Texas Instruments or the communications processors supplied by Motorola or Cavium Networks or disruption in their timely delivery would require us to make a large investment in capital and personnel to shift to using chips or signal processors manufactured by other companies and may cause a delay in introducing replacement products. Customers may not accept an alternative product design. Supporting old products or redesigning products may make it more difficult for us to support our products.

We utilizedepend on other sole source suppliers upon whom we dependto produce components for us without havingthe benefit of long-term supply agreements or alternative source agreements.

Some of our sole source suppliers custom produce components for us based upon our specifications and designs while other of our sole source suppliers are the only manufacturers of certain components required by our products. We have not entered into any long-term supply agreements or alternative source agreements with our suppliers and while we maintain an inventory of components from single source providers, our inventory would likely not be sufficient in the event that we had to engage an alternate supplier of these single source components. In the event of any interruption in the supply of components from any of our sole source suppliers, we may have to expend significant time, effort and other resources in order to locate a suitable alternative manufacturer and secure replacement components. If no replacement components are available, we may be forced to redesign certain of our products. Any such new design may not be accepted by our customers. A prolonged disruption in supply may force us to redesign and retest our products. Any interruption in supply from any of these sources or an unexpected technical failure or termination of the manufacture of components could disrupt production, thereby adversely affecting our ability to deliver products and to support products previously sold to our customers.

In addition, if demand for telecommunications equipment increases, we may face a shortage of components from our suppliers. This could result in longer lead times, increases in the price of components and a reduction in our margins, all of which could adversely affect the results of our operations.

Our customers may require us to produce products or systems to hold in inventory in order to meet their “just in time,” or short lead time, delivery requirements. If we are unable to sell this inventory on a timely basis, we could incur charges for excess and obsolete inventory which would adversely affect our results of operations.

Our customers expect us to maintain an inventory of products available for purchase off the shelf subsequent to the initial sales cycle for these products. This may require us to incur the costs of manufacturing inventory without having a purchase order for the products. The VoIP industry is subject to rapid technological change and volatile customer demands, which result in a short product commercial life before a product becomes obsolete. If we are unable to sell products that are produced to hold in inventory, we will need to write-off all or a part of the inventory value of these products. Write-offs could adversely affect our operating results and financial condition. We wrote off inventory in an aggregate amount of $2.3 million in 2012 $1.7 million in 2013, and $82,000 in 2014.2014 and $724,000 in 2015. We have incurred write-offs as a result of slow moving items, excess inventories, discontinued products and products with market prices lower than cost.

The right of our customers to return products and their right to exchange products may affect our ability to recognize revenues which could adversely affect the results of our operations.

Some of our customers expect us to permit them to return some or all of the products they purchase from us. If we contractually agree to allow a customer to return products, the customer may be entitled to a refund for the returned products or to receive a credit for the purchase of replacement products.Ifproducts. If we agree to this type of contractual obligation, it could affect our ability to recognize revenues. In addition, if we are not able to resell any products that are returned, we would have to write off this inventory. This could adversely affect our results of operations.

Our products generally have long sales cycles and implementation periods, which increase our costs in obtaining orders and reduce the predictability of our revenues.

Our products are technologically complex and are typically intended for use in applications that may be critical to the business of our customers. Prospective customers generally must make a significant commitment of resources to test and evaluate our products and to integrate them into larger systems .. As a result, our sales process is often subject to delays associated with lengthy approval processes that typically accompany the design and testing of new communications equipment. The sales cycles of our products to new customers are approximately six to twelve months after a design win, depending on the type of customer and complexity of the product. This time period may be further extended because of internal testing, field trials and requests for the addition or customization of features. This delays the time until we realize revenue and results in significant investment of resources in attempting to make sales.

Long sales cycles also subject us to risks not usually encountered in a short sales span, including customers’ budgetary constraints, internal acceptance reviews and cancellation. In addition, orders expected in one quarter could shift to another because of the timing of customers’ procurement decisions. The time required to implement our products can vary significantly with the needs of our customers and generally exceeds several months; larger implementations can take multiple calendar quarters. This complicates our planning processes and reduces the predictability of our revenues.

Our proprietary technology is difficult to protect, and our products may infringe on the intellectual property rights of third parties. Our business may suffer if we are unable to protect our intellectual property or if we are sued for infringing the intellectual property rights of third parties.

Our success and ability to compete depend in part upon protecting our proprietary technology. We rely on a combination of patent, trade secret, copyright and trademark laws, nondisclosure and other contractual agreements and technical measures to protect our proprietary rights. These agreements and measures may not be sufficient to protect our technology from third-party infringement, or to protect us from the claims of others.

Enforcement of intellectual property rights may be expensive and may divert attention of management and of research and development personnel away from our business. Intellectual property litigation could also call into question the ownership or scope of rights owned by us. We believe that at least one of our patents may cover technology related to the ITU G.723.1 standard. Because of our involvement in the standard setting process, we may be required to license certain of our patents on a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis to a current or future competitor, to the extent required to carry out the G.723.1 standard. Additionally, our products may be manufactured, sold, or used in countries that provide less protection to intellectual property than that provided under U.S. or Israeli laws or where we do not hold relevant intellectual property rights.

We believe that the frequency of third-party intellectual property claims is increasing, as patent holders, including entities that are not in our industry and that purchase patents as an investment or to monetize such rights by obtaining royalties, use infringement assertions as a competitive tactic and a source of additional revenue. Any intellectual property claims against us, even if without merit, could cost us a significant amount of money to defend and divert management’s attention away from our business. We may not be able to secure a license for technology that is used in our products and we may face injunctive proceedings that prevent distribution and sale of our products even prior to any dispute being concluded. These proceedings may also have a deterrent effect on purchases by customers, who may be unsure about our ability to continue to supply their requirements. We may be forced to repurchase our products and compensate customers that have purchased such infringing products. We may be forced to redesign the product so that it becomes non-infringing, which may have an adverse impact on the results of our operations.

In addition, claims alleging that the development, use, or sale of our products infringes third parties’ intellectual property rights may be directed either at us or at our direct or indirect customers. We may be required to indemnify such customers against claims made against them. We may be required to indemnify them even if we believe that the claim of infringement is without merit.

Multiple patent holders in our industry may result in increased licensing costs.

There are a number of companies besides us that hold patents for various aspects of the technology incorporated in our industry’s standards and our products. We expect that patent enforcement will be given high priority by companies seeking to gain competitive advantages or additional revenues. We have been sued a number of times in recent years for alleged patent infringement. TheIf holders of patents may take the position that we are required to obtain a license from them. Wethem, we cannot be certain that we would be able to negotiate a license agreement at an acceptable price or at all. Our results of operations could be adversely affected by the payment of any additional licensing costs or if we are prevented from manufacturing or selling a product.

Changes in governmental regulations in the United States or other countries could slow the growth of the VoIP telephony market and reduce the demand for our customers’ products, which, in turn, could reduce the demand for our products.

VoIP and other services are not currently subject to all of the same regulations that apply to traditional telephony. Nevertheless, it is possible that foreign or U.S. federal or state legislatures may seek to impose increased fees and administrative burdens on VoIP, data, and video providers. The FCC requires VoIP service providers to meet various emergency service requirements relating to delivery of 911 calls, known as E911, and to accommodate law enforcement interception or wiretapping requirements, such as the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA. In addition, the FCC may seek to impose other traditional telephony requirements such as disability access requirements, consumer protection requirements, number assignment and portability requirements, and other obligations, including additional obligations regarding E911 and CALEA. The cost of complying with FCC regulations could increase the cost of providing Internet phone service which could result in slower growth and decreased profitability for this industry, which would adversely affect our business.

The enactment of any additional regulation or taxation of communications over the Internet in the United States or elsewhere in the world could have a material adverse effect on our customers’ (and their customers’) businesses and could therefore adversely affect sales of our products. We do not know what effect, if any, possible legislation or regulatory actions in the United States or elsewhere in the world may have on private telecommunication networks, the provision of VoIP services and purchases of our products.

Use of encryption technology in our products is regulated by governmental authorities and may require special development, export or import licenses. Delays in the issuance of required licenses, or the inability to secure these licenses, could adversely affect our revenues and results of operations.

Growth in the demand for security features may increase the use of encryption technology in our products. The use of encryption technology is generally regulated by governmental authorities and may require specific development, export or import licenses. Encryption standards may be based on proprietary technologies. We may be unable to incorporate encryption standards into our products in a manner that will insure interoperability. We also may be unable to secure licenses for proprietary technology on reasonable terms. If we cannot meet encryption standards, or secure required licenses for proprietary encryption technology, our revenues and results of operations could be adversely affected.

We are subject to regulations that require us to use components based on environmentally friendly materials. We may be subject to various regulations relating to management and disposal of waste with respect to electronic equipment. Compliance with these regulations has increased our costs. Failure to comply with these regulations could materially adversely affect our results of operations.

We are subject to an increasing number of telecommunications industry regulations requiring the use of environmentally-friendly materials in telecommunications equipment. For example, pursuant to a European Community directive, telecom equipment suppliers are required to stop using specified materials that are not environmentally friendly. In addition, telecom equipment suppliers that take advantage of an exemption with respect to the use of lead in solders are required by this directive to eliminate the lead in solders from their products by the time set forth by the European Community regulations. ThisWe expect that a new date for this exemption has been extended by the authorities.will be announced during 2016. Some of our customers may also require products that meet higher standards than those required by the directive, such as complete removal of additional harmful substances from our products. We are dependent on our suppliers for components and sub-system modules, such as semiconductors and purchased assemblies and goods, to comply with these requirements. This may harm our ability to sell our products in regions or to customers that may adopt such directives.

Compliance with these directives, especially with respect to the requirement that products eliminate lead solders, has required us to undertake significant expenses with respect to the re-design of our products. In addition, we may be required to pay higher prices for components that comply with this directive. We may not be able to pass these higher component costs on to our customers. Compliance with these regulations have increased and could continue to increase our product design costs. New designs may also require qualification testing with both customers and government certification boards. We cannot be certain of the reliability of any new designs that utilize non-lead components. While we have not experienced any significant reliability issues as a result of using non-lead components, the incorporation of these new components could adversely affect equipment reliability and durability.

Some of our operations use substances regulated under various federal, state, local and international laws governing the environment, including laws governing the management and disposal of waste with respect to electronic equipment. We could incur substantial costs, including fines and civil or criminal sanctions, if we were to violate or become liable under environmental laws or if our products become non-compliant with environmental laws. We also face increasing complexity in our product design and procurement operations as we adjust to new and future requirements relating to the materials that compose our products. The EU has enacted the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive, which makes producers of electrical goods financially responsible for specified collection, recycling, treatment and disposal of past and future covered products. Similar legislation has been or may be enacted in other jurisdictions, including the United States, Canada, Mexico, China and Japan.

Our inability or failure to comply with these regulations could have a material adverse effect on our results of operations. In addition, manufacturers of components that use lead solders may decide to stop manufacturing those components prior to the required compliance date. These actions by manufacturers of components could result in a shortage of components that could adversely affect our business and results of operations.

We have a significant presence in international markets and plan to continue to expand our international operations, which exposes us to a number of risks that could affect our future growth.

We have a worldwide sales, marketing and support infrastructure that is comprised of independent distributors and value added resellers, and our own personnel resulting in a sales, marketing and support presence in many countries, including markets in North America, Western and Eastern Europe, the Asia Pacific region and Latin America. We expect to continue to increase our sales headcount, our applications development headcount, our field support headcount, our marketing headcount and our engineering headcount and, in some cases, establish new relationships with distributors, particularly in markets where we currently do not have a sales or customer support presence. As we continue to expand our international sales and operations, we are subject to a number of risks, including the following:

Any of these risks could adversely affect our international operations, reduce our revenues from outside the United States or increase our operating costs, adversely affecting our business, results of operations and financial condition and growth prospects. There can be no assurance that all of our employees and channel partners will comply with the formal policies we have and will implement, or applicable laws and regulations. Violations of laws or key control policies by our employees and channel partners could result in delays in revenue recognition, financial reporting misstatements, fines, penalties or the prohibition of the importation or exportation of our software and services and could have a material adverse effect on our business and results of operations.

A significant portion of our revenues is generated outside of the Americas and Israel. We intend to continue to expand our operations internationally and, as a result, our results of operations could suffer if we are unable to manage our international operations effectively.

Revenues generated outside of the Americas and Israel represented approximately 42% of our revenues in 2012 42% of our revenues in 2013 and 44% of our revenues in 2014.2014 and in 2015. Part of our strategy is to expand our penetration in existing foreign markets and to enter new foreign markets. Our ability to penetrate some international markets may be limited due to different technical standards, protocols or product requirements in different markets. Expansion of our international business will require significant management attention and financial resources. Our international sales and operations are subject to numerous risks inherent in international business activities, including:

If we are unable to address these risks, our foreign operations may be unprofitable or the value of our investment in our foreign operations may decrease.

The prices of our products may become less competitive due to foreign exchange fluctuations.

Although we have operations throughout the world, the majority of our revenues and our operating costs in 20142015 were denominated in, or linked to, the U.S. dollar. Accordingly, we consider the U.S. dollar to be our functional currency. However, a significant portion of our operating costs in 20142015 were incurred in New Israeli Shekels (NIS). During 2014,2015, the NIS depreciated against the U.S. dollar, which resulted in a decrease in the U.S. dollar cost of our operations in Israel. As a result of this differential, from time to time we may experience increases in the costs of our operations outside the United States, as expressed in U.S. dollars. If there is a significant increase in our expenses, we may be required to increase the prices of our products and may be less competitive. Currently, our international sales are denominated primarily in U.S. dollars. Therefore, any devaluation in the local currencies of our customers relative to the U.S. dollar could cause customers to decrease or cancel orders or default on payment.

Our sales to European customers denominated in Euros are increasing. Sales denominated in Euros could make our revenues subject to fluctuation in the Euro/U.S. dollar exchange rate. If the U.S. dollar appreciates against the Euro, we may be required to increase the prices of our products that are denominated in Euros. In 2014,2015, the U.S. dollar appreciated against the Euro, which resulted in an increase in the prices of our products that are denominated in Euros.

We may be unable to attractOur independent sales representatives who willmay fail to market our products effectively.

A significant portion of our marketing and sales involves the aid of independent sales representatives that are not under our direct control. We cannot be certain that our current independent sales representatives will continue to distribute our products or that, even if they continue to distribute our products, they will do so successfully. These representatives are not subject to any minimum purchase requirements and can discontinue marketing our products at any time. In addition, these representatives often market products of our competitors. Accordingly, we must compete for the attention and sales efforts of our independent sales representatives.

Our products could contain defects, which would reduce sales of those products or result in claims against us.

We develop complex and evolving products. Despite testing by us and our customers, undetected errors or defects may be found in existing or new products. The introduction of products with reliability, quality or compatibility problems could result in reduced revenues, additional costs, increased product returns and difficulty or delays in collecting accounts receivable. The risk is higher with products still in the development stage, where full testing or certification is not yet completed. This could result in, among other things, a delay in recognition or loss of revenues, loss of market share or failure to achieve market acceptance. We could also be subject to material claims by customers that are not covered by our insurance.

Obtaining certification of our products by national regulators may be time-consuming and expensive. We may be unable to sell our products in markets in which we are unable to obtain certification.

Our customers may expect us to obtain certificates of compliance with safety and technical standards set by national regulators, especially standards set by U.S. or European regulators. There is no uniform set of standards, and each national regulator may impose and change its own standards. National regulators may also prohibit us from importing products that do not conform to their standards. If we make any change in the design of a product, we are usually required to obtain recertification of the product. The process of certification may be time-consuming and expensive and may affect the length of the sales cycle for a product. If we are unable to obtain certification of a product in a market, we may be unable to sell the product in that market.

We depend on a limited number of key personnel who would be difficult to replace.

Because our products are complex and our market is evolving, the success of our business depends in large part upon the continuing contributions of our management and key personnel. Specifically, we rely heavily on the services of Shabtai Adlersberg, our Chief Executive Officer and President, and Lior Aldema, our Chief Operating Officer and Head of Global Sales. If our Chief Executive Officer or our Chief Operating Officer are unable or unwilling to continue with us, our results of operations could be materially and adversely affected. We do not carry key person insurance for our key personnel.

The success of our business also depends upon our continuing ability to attract and retain other highly-qualified management, technical, sales and marketing personnel. We need highly-qualified technical personnel who are capable of developing technologies and products and providing the technical support required by our customers. We experience competitive pressure with respect to retaining and hiring employees in the high technology sector in Israel. If we fail to hire and retain skilled employees, our business may be adversely affected.

If we do not manage our operations effectively, our results of operations could be adversely affected.

We have actively expanded our operations in the past and may continue to expand them in the future. This expansion has required, and may continue to require, the application of managerial, operational and financial resources. We cannot be sure that we will continue to expand, or that we will be able to expand our operations successfully. In particular, our business requires us to focus on multiple markets, including the VoIP, wireline, cable, enterprise unified communications and wireless markets. In addition, we work simultaneously with a number of large OEMs and network equipment providers each of which may have different requirements for the products that we sell to them. We may not have sufficient personnel, or may be unable to devote this personnel when needed, to address the requirements of these markets and customers. If we are unable to manage our operations effectively, our revenues may not increase, our cost of operations may rise and our results of operations may be adversely affected.

As we grow we may need new or enhanced systems, procedures or controls. The transition to such systems, procedures or controls, as well as any delay in transitioning to new or enhanced systems, procedures or controls, may seriously harm our ability to accurately forecast sales demand, manage our product inventory and record and report financial and management information on a timely and accurate basis.

The growth in our product portfolio means that we have to service and support more products. This may result in an increase in our expenses and an adverse effect on our results of operations.

The size of our product portfolio has increased and continues to increase. As a result, we are required to provide product support to our customers sales support.customers. Customers have requested that we provide a contractual commitment to support a product for a specified period of time. This period of time may exceed the working life of the product or extend past the period of time that we may intend to manufacture or support a product. We are dependent on our suppliers for the components (hardware and software) needed to provide support and may be unable to secure the components necessary to satisfy our service commitments. We do not have long-term contracts with our suppliers, and they may not be obligated to provide us with products or services for any specified period of time. We may need to purchase an inventory of replacement components and parts in advance in order to try to provide for their availability when needed. This could result in an increased risk of write-offs with respect to our replacement component inventory to the extent that we cannot accurately predict our future requirements under our customer service contracts. If any of our component suppliers cease production, cease operations or refuse or fail to make timely delivery of orders, we may not be able to meet our contractual commitments for product support. We may be required to supply enhanced components or parts as substitutes if the original versions are no longer available. Product support may be costly and any extra service revenues may not cover the hardware and software costs associated with providing long-term support.

Terrorist attacks, or the threat of such attacks, may negatively impact the global economy which may materially adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operation and may cause our share price to decline.

Financial, political, economic and other uncertainties following terrorist attacks throughout the world may negatively impact the global economy. As a result, many of our customers and potential customers have become much more cautious in setting their capital expenditure budgets, thereby restricting their telecommunications procurement. Uncertainties related to the threat of terrorism have had a negative effect on global economy, causing businesses to continue slowing spending on telecommunications products and services and further lengthen already long sales cycles. Any escalation of these threats or similar future events may disrupt our operations or those of our customers, distributors and suppliers, which could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We are subject to taxation in several countries.

Because we operate in several countries, we are subject to taxation in multiple jurisdictions. We are required to report to and are subject to local tax authorities in the countries in which we operate. In addition, our income that is derived from sales to customers in one country might also be subject to taxation in other countries. We cannot be sure of the amount of tax we may become obligated to pay in the countries in which we operate. The tax authorities in the countries in which we operate may not agree with our tax position. Our tax benefits from carry forward losses and other tax planning benefits such as Israeli approved enterprise programs, may prove to be insufficient due to Israeli tax limitations, or may prove to be insufficient to offset tax liabilities from foreign tax authorities. Foreign tax authorities may also use our gross profit or our revenues in each territory as the basis for determining our income tax, and our operating expenses might not be considered for related tax calculations, which could adversely affect our results of operations.

Risks Related to Operations in Israel

Conditions in Israel affect our operations and may limit our ability to produce and sell our products and instability in the Middle East may adversely affect us.

We are incorporated under the laws of the State of Israel, and our principal executive offices and principal research and development facilities are located in the State of Israel. Political, economic and military conditions in Israel directly affect our operations. There has been an increase in unrest and terrorist activity in Israel, which has continued with varying levels of severity for many years through the current period of time. This has led to ongoing hostilities between Israel, the Palestinian Authority, other groups in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the northern border of Lebanon, such as the hostilities along Israel's border with the Gaza Strip and the missiles fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel in 2012 and 2013, as well as during the latest hostilities in the summer of 2014. The future effect of this conflict on the Israeli economy and our operations is unclear. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict may also lead to political instability between Israel and its neighboring countries. Ongoing violence between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as tension between Israel and the neighboring countries, may have a material adverse effect on our business, financial conditions and results of operations.

Recent political events in various countries in the Middle East, such as Syria, Iraq, Iran and Egypt, have weakened the stability of those countries, and have allowed extreme terrorists organizations, such as ISIS, to operate in certain territories in the Middle East. This instability may lead to deterioration of the geo-political conditions in the Middle East. In addition, this instability may affecthas affected the global economy and marketplace through changesfluctuations in oil and gas prices. Our headquarters and research and development facilities are located in the State of Israel. Any events that affect the State of Israel may impact us in unpredictable ways. WeFor example, recent activities of the global movement for a campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel may adversely affect our sales in certain countries.We have contingent plans for alternative manufacturing and supply sources, but these plans may be insufficient. Should our operations be impacted in a significant way, this may adversely affect the results of our operations.

We cannot predict the effect on us of an increase in these hostilities or any future armed conflict, political instability or violence in the region. Additionally, some of our officers and employees in Israel are obligated to perform annual military reserve duty and are subject to being called for additional active duty under emergency circumstances. Some of our employees live within conflict area territories and may be forced to stay at home instead of reporting to work. We cannot predict the full impact of these conditions on us in the future, particularly if emergency circumstances or an escalation in the political situation occur. If many of our employees are called for active duty, or forced to stay at home, our operations in Israel and our business may be adversely affected.

A number of countries and organizations continue to restrict or ban business with Israel or Israeli companies or companies doing business with Israel or Israeli companies, which may limit our ability to make sales in those countries. In addition, there have been increased efforts by activists to cause companies and consumers to boycott Israeli goods based on Israeli government policies. Such actions, particularly if they become more widespread, may adversely impact our ability to sell our products.

We are adversely affected by the changes is the value of the U.S. dollar against the New Israeli Shekel and could be adversely affected by the rate of inflation in Israel.

We generate most of our revenues in U.S. dollars and, in 2014,2015, a significant portion of our expenses, primarily salaries, related personnel expenses and the leases of our buildings in Israel, were incurred in NIS. We anticipate that a significant portion of our expenses will continue to be denominated in NIS.

Our NIS related costs, as expressed in U.S. dollars, are influenced by the exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and the NIS. During , 2012 and 2013, the NIS appreciated against the U.S. dollar, which resulted in a significant increase in the U.S. dollar cost of our operations in Israel. During 2014 and 2015, the NIS depreciated against the U.S. dollar, which resulted in a decrease in the U.S. dollar cost of our operations in Israel. To the extent the U.S. dollar weakens against the NIS, we could experience an increase in the cost of our operations, which are measured in U.S. dollars in our financial statements, which could adversely affect our results of operations. In addition, in periods in which the U.S. dollar appreciates against the NIS, we bear the risk that the rate of inflation in Israel will exceed the rate of such devaluation of the NIS in relation to the U.S. dollar or that the timing of such devaluations were to lag considerably behind inflation, which will increase our costs as expressed in U.S. dollars.

A decrease in value of the U.S. dollar in relation to the NIS could have the effect of increasing the cost in U.S. dollars of these expenses. Our U.S. dollar-measured results of operations were adversely affected in 2012 and 2013 when the NIS appreciated against the U.S. dollar. This could happen again if the U.S. dollar were to decrease in value against the NIS.

In order to manage the risks imposed by foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations, from time to time, we enter into currency forward and put and call options contracts to hedge some of our foreign currency exposure. We can provide no assurance that our hedging arrangements will be effective. In addition, if we wish to maintain the U.S. dollar-denominated value of our products in non-U.S. markets, devaluation in the local currencies of our customers relative to the U.S. dollar may cause our customers to cancel or decrease orders or default on payment.

Because exchange rates between the NIS and the U.S. dollar fluctuate continuously, exchange rate fluctuations have an impact on our profitability and period-to-period comparisons of our results of operations. In 2015, the value of the U.S. dollar increased in relation to the NIS by 0.3% and the deflation rate in Israel was 1.0%. In 2014, the value of the U.SU.S. dollar increased in relation to the NIS by 12.0% and the deflation rate in Israel was 0.1%. In 2013, the value of the U.S. dollar decreased in relation to the NIS by 7.0% and the inflation rate in Israel was 1.9%. In 2012, the value of the U.S. dollar decreased in relation to the NIS by 2.3% and the inflation rate in Israel was 1.4%. Our results of operations may be adversely affected in case of a decrease in the value of the U.S. dollar to the NIS.

The Israeli government programs in which we currently participate, and the tax benefits we currently receive require us to meet several conditions and may be terminated or reduced in the future, which would increase our costs.

Currently there are four programs under the Israeli Law for the Encouragement of Capital Investments, 1959, or the Investment Law, that entitle us to certain tax benefits. Our facilities in Israel have been granted Approved Enterprise status under the Israeli Law for the Encouragement of Capital Investments, 1959, or the Investment Law under four programs of Approved Enterprise. We have two programs that qualify as Beneficiary Enterprises pursuant to an amendment to the Investment Law that came into effect in April 2005. Among other things, the Investment Law, as amended in 2005, provides tax benefits to both local and foreign investors and simplifies the approval process. Such amendments do not apply to investment programs approved prior to December 31, 2004. Therefore, our Approved Enterprise program is not subject to the provisions of the amendment, but our four Beneficiary Enterprise programs are subject to the amendment.

In order to be eligible for tax benefits under the Investment Law, our Approved Enterprise and Privileged Enterprises must comply with various conditions set forth in the Investment Law and the criteria set forth in the applicable certificate of approval for the Approved Enterprise, as well as periodic reporting obligations. If we fail to meet these requirements, we would be subject to corporate tax in Israel at the regular statutory rate. Additionally, some of these programs and the related tax benefits are available to us for a limited number of years, and these benefits expire from time to time. We could also be required to refund tax benefits, with interest and adjustments for inflation based on the Israeli consumer price index. See Note 15 to our Consolidated Financial Statements for additional information with respect to tax benefits under the Investment Law.

If the Government of Israel discontinues or modifies these programs and potential tax benefits, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be materially and adversely affected.

The government grants we have received for research and development expenditures limit our ability to manufacture products and transfer technologies outside of Israel and require us to satisfy specified conditions. If we fail to satisfy these conditions, we may be required to refund grants previously received together with interest and penalties.

In connection with research and development grants we received from the Office of the Chief Scientist of the Israeli Ministry of Economy, or the OCS, we must pay royalties to the OCS on the revenue derived from the sale of products, technologies and services developed with the grants from the OCS. The terms of the OCS grants and the law pursuant to which grants are made restrict our ability to manufacture products or transfer technologies outside of Israel if OCS grants funded the development of the products or technology, without special approvals from the OCS. Furthermore, the consideration available to our shareholders in a transaction involving the transfer outside of Israel of technology or know-how developed with OCS funding (such as a merger or similar transaction) may be reduced by any amounts that we are required to pay the OCS. These restrictions may limit our ability to enter into agreements for such transactions without OCS approval. We cannot be certain that any approval of the OCS will be obtained on terms that are acceptable to us, or at all.

In order to meet specified conditions in connection with the grants and programs of the OCS, we have made representations to the Government of Israel concerning our Israeli operations. If we fail to meet the conditions related to the grants, including the maintenance of a material presence in Israel, or if there is any material deviation from the representations made by us to the Israeli government, we could be required to refund the grants previously received (together with an adjustment based on the Israeli consumer price index and an interest factor) and would likely be ineligible to receive OCS grants in the future and, in certain cases, may be subject to criminal charges. In addition, manufacturing products outside the State of Israel (as we currently do) increases the rates of royalties to be paid to the OCS. Any inability to receive these grants would result in an increase in our research and development expenses.

In 2014,2015, we recognized a royalty-bearing grant of $3.9$5.4 million from the Government of Israel, through the OCS, for the financing of a portion of our research and development expenditures in Israel. The OCS budget has been subject to reductions, which may affect the availability of funds for these prospective grants and other grants in the future. As a result, we cannot be certain that we will continue to receive grants at the same rate, or at all .all. In addition, the terms of any future OCS grants may be less favorable than our past grant. As of December 31, 2014,2015, we have a contingent obligation to pay royalties in the amount of approximately $39.6$45.6 million.

A recent amendment to the R&D Law entered into effect on January 1, 2016.  The amendment requires the formation of a new governmental authority to replace the Chief Scientist.  Such new authority is required to be established by no later than July 28, 2018 and is expected to establish new guidelines regarding the R&D Law.  Such amendment creates uncertainty with respect to the terms of our existing and/or future Chief Scientist programs and incentives as we do not know what guidelines will be adopted by such new authority. 

It may be difficult to enforce a U.S. judgment against us, our officers and directors, assert U.S. securities law claims in Israel or serve process on substantially all of our officers and directors.

We are incorporated in Israel. Most of our executive officers and directors are nonresidents of the United States, and a majority of our assets and the assets of these persons are located outside the United States. Therefore, it may be difficult to enforce a judgment obtained in the United States against us or any such persons or to effect service of process upon these persons in the United States. Israeli courts may refuse to hear a claim based on a violation of U.S. securities laws because Israel is not the most appropriate forum to bring such a claim. In addition, even if an Israeli court agrees to hear a claim, it may determine that Israeli law and not U.S. law is applicable to the claim. If U.S. law is found to be applicable, the content of applicable U.S. law must be proved as a fact which can be a time-consuming and costly process. Certain matters of procedure will also be governed by Israeli law. There is little binding case law in Israel addressing these matters. Additionally, there is doubt as to the enforceability of civil liabilities under the Securities Act and the Exchange Act in original actions instituted in Israel.

Israeli lawand provisions in our articles of association may delay, prevent or make difficult a merger with or an acquisition of us, which could prevent a change of control and therefore depress the price of our shares.

Provisions of Israeli law may delay, prevent or make undesirable a merger or an acquisition of all or a significant portion of our shares or assets. Israeli corporate law regulates acquisitions of shares through tender offers and mergers, requires special approvals for transactions involving significant shareholders and regulates other matters that may be relevant to these types of transactions. These provisions of Israeli law could have the effect of delaying or preventing a change in control and may make it more difficult for a third party to acquire us, even if doing so would be beneficial to our shareholders. These provisions may limit the price that investors may be willing to pay in the future for our ordinary shares. In addition, our articles of association contain certain provisions that may make it more difficult to acquire us, such as a staggered board, the ability of our board of directors to issue preferred stock and limitations on business combinations with interested shareholders. Furthermore, Israel tax considerations may make potential transactions undesirable to us or to some of our shareholders.

The rights and responsibilities of our shareholders are governed by Israeli law which may differ in some respects from the rights and responsibilities of shareholders of U.S. corporations.

Since we are incorporated under Israeli law, the rights and responsibilities of our shareholders are governed by our articles of association and Israeli law. These rights and responsibilities differ in some respects from the rights and responsibilities of shareholders in United States corporations. In particular, a shareholder of an Israeli company has a duty to act in good faith and in a customary manner in exercising its rights and performing its obligations towards the company and other shareholders and to refrain from abusing its power in the company, including, among other things, in voting at a general meeting of shareholders on certain matters, such as an amendment to a company’s articles of association, an increase of a company’s authorized share capital, a merger of a company and approval of related party transactions that require shareholder approval. In addition, a controlling shareholder or a shareholder who knows that it possesses the power to determine the outcome of a shareholders’ vote or to appoint or prevent the appointment of an office holder in a company or has another power with respect to a company, has a duty to act in fairness towards the company. However, Israeli law does not define the substance of this duty of fairness. Some of the parameters and implications of the provisions that govern shareholder behavior have not been clearly determined. These provisions may be interpreted to impose additional obligations and liabilities on our shareholders that are not typically imposed on shareholders of United States corporations.

Risks Relating to the Ownership of our Ordinary Shares

The price of our ordinary shares may fluctuate significantly.

The market price for our ordinary shares, as well as the prices of shares of other technology companies, has been volatile. Between January 1, 20102011 and March 20, 2015,25, 2016, our share price has fluctuated from a low of $1.20 to a high of $9.12. The following factors may cause significant fluctuations in the market price of our ordinary shares:

In addition, stock prices of many technology companies fluctuate significantly for reasons that may be unrelated or disproportionate to operating results. The factors discussed above may depress or cause volatility of our share price, regardless of our actual operating results.

Our quarterly results of operations have fluctuated in the past and we expect these fluctuations to continue. Fluctuations in our results of operations may disappoint investors and result in a decline in our share price.

We have experienced and expect to continue to experience significant fluctuations in our quarterly results of operations. In some periods, our operating results may be below public expectations or below revenue levels and operating results reached in prior quarters or in the corresponding quarters of the previous year. If this occurs, the market price of our ordinary shares could decline.

The following factors have affected our quarterly results of operations in the past and are likely to affect our quarterly results of operations in the future:

Therefore, the results of any past periods may not be relied upon as an indication of our future performance.

Our actual financial results might vary from our publicly disclosed financial forecasts.

From time to time, we publicly disclose financial forecasts.forecasts and other performance metrics. Our forecasts reflect numerous assumptions concerning our expected performance, as well as other factors which are beyond our control and which might not turn out to be correct. As a result, variations from our forecasts could be material. Our financial results are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, including those identified throughout this “Risk Factors” section and elsewhere in this Annual Report. If our actual financial results are worse than our financial forecasts, the price of our ordinary shares may decline. A large portion of our sales is made during the last month of each quarter. As a result, any delay in our receipt of orders could affect our results for a quarter and the accuracy of our forecasts.

It is our policy that we will generally not provide quarterly forecasts of the results of our operations. This policy could affect the willingness of analysts to provide research with respect to our ordinary shares, which could affect the trading market for our ordinary shares.

It is our policy that we will generally not provide quarterly forecasts of the results of our operations. This could result in the reduction of research analysts who cover our ordinary shares. Any reduction in research coverage could affect the willingness of investors, particularly institutional investors, to invest in our shares which could affect the trading market for our ordinary shares and the price at which our ordinary shares are traded.

As a foreign private issuer whose shares are listed on NASDAQ, we follow certain home country corporate governance practices instead of certain NASDAQ requirements.

As a foreign private issuer whose shares are listed on NASDAQ, we are permitted to follow certain home country corporate governance practices instead of certain requirements contained in the NASDAQ listing rules. We do not comply with the NASDAQ requirement that we obtain shareholder approval for certain dilutive events, such as for the establishment or amendment of certain equity based compensation plans. Instead, we follow Israeli law and practice which permits the establishment or amendment of certain equity based compensation plans to be approved by our board of directors without the need for a shareholder vote, unless such arrangements are for the compensation of directors or the chief executive officer, in which case they also require compensation committee and shareholder approval.

As a foreign private issuer listed on the NASDAQ, we may also elect in the future to follow home country practice with regard to, among other things, director nomination,nominations, composition of the board of directors and quorum at shareholders’ meetings, as well as not obtain shareholder approval for certain dilutive events.

Accordingly, our shareholders may not be afforded the same protection as provided under NASDAQ’s corporate governance rules.

Our ordinary shares are listed for trading in more than one market and this may result in price variations.

Our ordinary shares are listed for trading on NASDAQ and on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (“TASE”). Trading in our ordinary shares on these markets is made in different currencies (U.S. dollars on NASDAQ and New Israeli Shekels on TASE), and at different times (resulting from different time zones, different trading days and different public holidays in the United States and Israel). Actual trading volume on the TASE is generally lower than trading volume on NASDAQ, and as such could be subject to higher volatility. The trading prices of our ordinary shares on these two markets often differ resulting from the factors described above, as well as differences in exchange rates. Any decrease in the trading price of our ordinary shares on one of these markets could cause a decrease in the trading price of our ordinary shares on the other market.

We do not anticipate declaring any cash dividends on our ordinary shares.

We have never declared or paid cash dividends on our ordinary shares and do not plan to pay any cash dividends in the near future.

U.S. shareholders face certain income tax risks in connection with their acquisition, ownership and disposition of our ordinary shares. In any tax year, we could be deemed a passive foreign investment company, which could result in adverse U.S. federal income tax consequences for U.S. shareholders.

Based on the composition of our gross income, the composition and value of our gross assets and the amounts of our liabilities for each taxable year from 2004 through 2014,2015, we do not believe that we were a passive foreign investment company, or PFIC, for U.S. federal income tax purposes during any of such tax years. It is likely, however, that we were a PFIC in each of 2001, 2002 and 2003. There can be no assurance that we will not become a PFIC in the current tax year or any future tax year in which, for example, the value of our assets, as measured by the public market valuation of our ordinary shares, declines in relation to the value of our passive assets (generally, cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities). If we are a PFIC for any tax year, U.S. shareholders who own our ordinary shares during such year may be subject to increased U.S. federal income tax liabilities and reporting requirements for such year and succeeding years, even if we cease to be a PFIC in such succeeding years. A U.S. holder of our ordinary shares will be required to file an information return containing certain information required by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service for each year in which we are treated as a PFIC with respect to such holder.

We urge U.S. holders of our ordinary shares to carefully review Item 10E. – “Taxation - U.S. Federal Income Tax Considerations” in this Annual Report and to consult their own tax advisors with respect to the U.S. federal income tax risks related to owning and disposing of our ordinary shares and the consequences of PFIC status.

We are subject to ongoing costs and risks associated with complying with extensive corporate governance and disclosure requirements.

As a foreign private issuer subject to U.S. federal securities laws, we spend a significant amount of management time and resources to comply with laws, regulations and standards relating to corporate governance and public disclosure, including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, United States Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) regulations and NASDAQ rules. While we have developed and instituted corporate compliance programs and continue to update our programs in response to newly implemented or changing regulatory requirements, we cannot provide assurance that we are or will be in compliance with all potentially applicable corporate regulations. If we fail to comply with any of these regulations, we could be subject to a range of regulatory actions, fines or other sanctions or litigation. In connection with our compliance with the internal control provisions of Section 404 and the other applicable provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, our management and other personnel devote a substantial amount of time, and may need to hire additional accounting and financial staff, to assure that we comply with these requirements. The additional management attention and costs relating to compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Dodd-Frank Act and other corporate governance requirements could materially and adversely affect our financial results.

The internal control over financial reporting required by Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act may not prevent or detect misstatements because of certain of its limitations, including the possibility of human error, the circumvention or overriding of controls, or fraud. As a result, even effective internal controls may not provide reasonable assurances with respect to the preparation and presentation of financial statements. We cannot provide assurance that, in the future, our management will not find a material weakness in connection with its annual review of our internal control over financial reporting pursuant to Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. We also cannot provide assurance that we could correct any such weakness to allow our management to assess the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting as of the end of our fiscal year in time to enable our independent registered public accounting firm to state that such assessment will have been fairly stated in our Annual Report on Form 20-F or state that we have maintained effective internal control over financial reporting as of the end of our fiscal year. Discovery and disclosure of a material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting could have a material impact on our financial statements and could cause our stock price to decline.

The conflict minerals disclosure rules in the United States are complex and compliance with the rules could be difficult.

We are subject to SEC disclosure obligations relating to our use of so-called “conflict minerals”-columbite-tantalite, cassiterite (tin), wolframite (tungsten) and gold. These minerals are present in a significant number of our products. The disclosure obligationsproducts; as a result, we are complex, and there is little formal guidance with respectrequired to their application. Under the rules as adopted, our firstfile a conflicts minerals report under these disclosure obligations was filed with the SEC in May 2014. Unless a legal challenge to the validity of these rules is upheld, this report is required to be filed on an annual basis by May of each year.

Although we expect to be able to file the required report on time if required to do so, theThe preparation of our report is dependent upon the implementation and operation of our systems and processes and information supplied by our suppliers of products that contain, or potentially contain, conflict minerals. We have incurred and will continue to incur costs associated with complying with the supply chain due diligence procedures required by the SEC. To the extent that the information that we receive from our suppliers is inaccurate or inadequate or our processes in obtaining that information do not fulfill the SEC's requirements, we could face both reputational and SEC enforcement risks. In addition, our efforts to comply with the disclosure rules and to otherwise implement conflict-free sourcing policies could result in changes to our supply chain that could disrupt existing supply sources or cause more uncertainty with respect to our supply chain.

AudioCodes Ltd. was incorporated in 1992 under the laws of the State of Israel. Our principal executive offices are located at 1 Hayarden Street, Airport City, Lod, 7019900 Israel. Our telephone number is +972-3-976-4000. Our agent in the United States is AudioCodes Inc., 27 World’s Fair Drive, Somerset, New Jersey 08873.

Major Developments since JanuaryMAJOR DEVELOPMENTS SINCE JANUARY 1, 20142015

In March 2014, we sold in a public offering 4,025,000 of our ordinary shares, including 525,000 shares sold pursuant to the exercise in full of an over-allotment option granted to the underwriters, at a purchase price of $8.00 per share. We realized from this offering net proceeds of approximately $29.7 million, after deducting underwriting commissions and other offering expenses.New R&D Center

In April 2014, the Israeli Office of the Chief Scientist (OCS) approved a three-year program (2014-2016) for approximately NIS100 million (equal to approximately $25.7 million based on the exchange rate in effect as of December 31, 2014) to enable us to establish an advanced innovative research and development center for cloud computing technologies and Unified Communications. In May 2014, the research and development center was established. The newAs of December 31, 2015, we employed 80 engineers at the research and development center is expected to increase its staff to 100 engineers by 2016.center. We expect that a significant portion of the cost of this project will be reimbursed to us through grants from the OCS pursuant to this program. The grants are subject to conditions relating to grants by the OCS. Funding for the whole term of the program is subject to the continued review and approval of the progress of the project by the OCS.

Since January 1, 2014,Software Enterprise Session Border Controller

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) continues to increase penetration in the service provider space. Service providers seek to harmonize their infrastructure on common off the shelf servers, instead of using proprietary hardware. In 2015, AudioCodes hascontinued to invest in NFV by adding more capabilities to its software SBC product line. This includes software-based transcoding, support and integration with OpenStack framework and an SBC AMI in Amazon Web Services cloud.

IP Phones

During 2015, we continued to evolve our IP Phones offering for Microsoft Skype for Business, contacts centers and hosted business services by developing additional capabilities and offering tighter manageability and control of the phones from the One Voice Operations Center. Additionally, we introduced the 405 IP Phone for price-sensitive customers and to help our penetration into Asia Pacific and Latin American markets.

Multi-Service-Business-Routers

During 2015, we continued to evolve our MSBR product line with more hardware configurations as required by service provider customers and more advanced capabilities such as Virtual Redundant Routing Protocol (VRRP), used to achieve enhanced reliability and availability of routing paths.

One Voice Operations Center

Our One Voice operations center (“OVOC”) offers management applications for large-scale cloud or premise-based unified communications deployments. It monitors, manages and operates AudioCodes’ session border controllers (SBC), media gateways, Microsoft survivable branch appliances (SBA), multi-service business routers (MSBR) and IP phones. During 2015 we invested in the following key product linesmodules and solutions to address the following market segments:functionalities of OVOC:

Session Experience Manager (SEM): In 2015 we launched the “SIP trunk Monitoring (STM)” service. SIP trunk monitoring is a cloud-based service to monitor, analyze and alert in real time VoIP call failures and voice quality issues. SIP trunk monitoring is targeted for enterprises with from 50 up to 2,000 SIP trunk sessions, looking for a cost effective OPEX-based SIP trunk monitoring service. The STM, is a fully featured Session Experience Manager to cover a single SBC which may be connected to multiple SIP trunks.

CloudBond 365

During 2014, AudioCodes expanded its portfolio specifically designed for Microsoft Skype for Business, Exchange online and Office 365. We launched One Box 365, One Box 365 Pro edition and the One Box 365 Enterprise edition product family that provide an all-in-one Skype for Business appliance solution. During 2015, we rebranded OneBox 365 to CloudBond 365. We continued to develop further capabilities for CloudBond 365 to make it more comprehensive in functionality and integration with the reset of the AudioCodes products.

Acquisition of Active Communications Europe

On December 31, 2015, we acquired Active Communications Europe, a leading provider of communications solutions that increase the effectiveness of departments, individuals and organizations. Active Communications Europe is a Microsoft Silver Partner specializing in unified communications. We believe that this acquisition will improve our ability to serve the growing market for Microsoft Skype for Business Online, Office 365 and Cloud PBX.

We acquired Active Communications Europe for a purchase price of $3 million, payable $2 million in cash at closing and $500,000 on each of the first and second anniversaries of the closing date. The deferred payments may be paid in cash or our ordinary shares at our option. We are also obligated under an earn-out arrangement pursuant to which we have agreed to pay up to an additional $2 million based on attaining certain sales targets over the next three years. In exceptional circumstances, the amount of the earn-out may increase. Following the transaction, Active Communications Europe became a wholly owned subsidiary of AudioCodes.

Principal Capital ExpendituresPRINCIPAL CAPITAL EXPENDITURES

We have made and expect to continue to make capital expenditures in connection with expansion of our production capacity. The table below sets forth our principal capital expenditures incurred for the periods indicated (amounts in thousands):

Introduction

AudioCodes designs, develops and sells advanced Voice over-IP (VoIP) and converged VoIP and data networking solutions, products and applications that facilitate secured, resilient and high quality Unified Communications (UC) and Contact Center (CC) services whether deployed on-premise or delivered from the cloud. Providing IP Phones, Customer Premise Equipment (CPE), and cloud-based platforms and applications, our solutions and products are geared to meet the growing needs of enterprises and service providers realigning their operations towards the transition to All-IP networks and hosted business services.

AudioCodes is a VoIP technology market leader focused on converged VoIP and data communications offering technology, products and solutions for Enterprise Unified Communications, contact centers, service provider business services, mobile VoIP and Cloud virtualized Data Centers. Our products are deployed globally in enterprise, service provider cloud networks. AudioCodes’ products include IP phones, session border controllers (SBC), media gateways, Multi-Service Business Routers (MSBRs), residential gateways, media servers, mobile communications solutions, value added applications, life cycle management solutions and professional services. AudioCodes high definition (HD) VoIP technologies and products provide enhanced intelligibility and a better end user experience in emerging voice communications services.

AudioCodes’ vision is to be the innovative leading supplier of converged VoIP and data solutions for enterprises, Value Added Resellers (VARs), System Integrators (SIs), service providers and Over the Top (OTT) communication providers worldwide. AudioCodes VoIP technology contains voice quality enhancements and best-of-breed VoIP network elements, and has a proven track record in product and network interoperability with the industry’s leading companies.

With over 22 years in the telecommunications market, AudioCodes’ offers a broad range of solutions for both enterprise and service provider deployments. These solutions are built around our field-proven VoIP product range. With full support for industry standard protocols such as SIP, and proven interoperability with all industry leading soft switches, PBXs, IP-PBXs and unified communications platforms, AudioCodes delivers innovative solutions for virtually any voice communications environment, offering reduced total cost of ownership (TCO), enhanced features, and superior voice quality.

Historical Overview

AudioCodes was established in 1993 to develop its low-bit-rate speech compression technology. Our first achievement was developing the speech compression algorithm that was selected by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) as a basis for the ITU-T G.723.1 standard.

Over the years, AudioCodes continued to expand our focus. Our development and expansion focused on different technologies and solutions as VoIP progressed:

Through acquisitions and partnerships, we were able to grow our business and expand our focus, while taking advantage of our core competence – voice processing and knowhow – which gave us the ability to mix and match technologies and become a solutions provider.

We design,expanded to compact PCI boards, achieving a transition to a higher capacity that helped develop the gateway market. In 2001, AudioCodes released its first media gateway independent platform, based on our blade and chip technology. The first product was an analog media gateway that was followed by a family of media gateways combining analog and digital interfaces. We then began to develop and sell high density media gateways and media servers.

We entered the field of call recording in 2004 when we acquired Ai-Logix. Ai-Logix was a leading provider of advanced voice recording technology and integration cards for the call recording and voice/data logging industries. AudioCodes used VoIP communications boards as we leveraged Ai-Logix’s technology, strategic partnerships and customer base. We currently sell our call recording solutions mainly in the connection with Microsoft solutions.

In 2006, we teamed with BroadSoft to help service providers deliver hosted VoIP service..By 2009, we had launched a strategic initiative with Broadsoft to simplify deployments of IP voice networks and, in 2014, BroadSoft and AudioCodes announced that they were collaborating on "One Voice for Hosted Services". The One Voice initiative included BroadSoft's unified communication services and AudioCodes' IP phones, routers, SBCs and gateways serving as a one stop shop for service providers that are offering enterprises next generation VoIP services.

AudioCodes continued to expand its product portfolio with session border controllers, multi-service business gateways/routers and IP Phones to be able to offer a wider range of products for leading UC and servicesCC software vendors.

In January 2013, AudioCodes launched “AudioCodes One Voice for voiceMicrosoft Skype for Business”, a unified product and data over packet networks. In broad terms, voice over packet, or VoP, networks consistservice program intended to simplify and accelerate voice-enablement of key network elements such as software switches, application servers,Microsoft Skype for Business (now Skype for Business) implementations with a complete portfolio of IP phones, media gateways, andenterprise session border controllers (SBC). Our(E-SBCs), survivable branch appliances (SBAs), session experience manager (SEM) network management tools, support and professional services. The program supports migration to Microsoft Skype for Business and co-existence with current telephony systems in multi-site and multi-national deployment.

On December 31, 2015, AudioCodes acquired Active Communications Europe to further strengthen our ability to provide advanced software solutions for the emerging Microsoft Skype for Business online application.

AudioCodes began working in the call center telecommunications sector in 2003 with VoiceGenie, which was acquired by Alcatel-Lucent-owned Genesys in 2006. In 2011, we were designated a vendor in the Genesys SIP Select program specifically for our Mediant 1000 and Mediant 2000 gateway products, primarilythat provide the interface between the PSTN and Genesys SIP Server. We now collaborate with Genesys on software SBC products, IP Phones, gateways, and manageability solutions.

AudioCodes now has tens of millions of SBC, media gateway and SBC elementmedia server channels deployed in over 100 countries across the network, as well as voice over Internet protocol, or VoIP, end-points such as IP Phones and VoIP mobile clients. Multi-service business routers integrate media gateway functionality with data routing and network access. Theglobe. Our high availability platforms (Mediant media gateways, connect legacy and IP networks. They essentially receive the legacy format of communication and convert it to an IP communication and vice versa. Typically, media gateways utilize compression algorithms to compress the amount of information and reduce the amount of bandwidth required to convey the information (for example, a voice communication). With the industry migration to an end-to-end IP network, media gateways evolved into SBC, now also connect between different VoIP networks, providing security, interoperability, resiliency and voice quality functionality.

Voice over IP gateway and SBC equipment can be generally segmented into three classes: service providers’ gateways and SBCs for use in central office facilities, enterprise gateways and SBCs for use by corporations and in small offices, and residential gateways for use in homes. In addition to the gateway element, which connects legacy voice equipment to an IP network, there is growth in native VoIP end user equipment, primarily including IP phones, soft phones and VoIP mobile clients, running on desktop PCs or portable devices such as cellular phones, smart phones, tablets, laptops, and other devices that have wireless IP connectivity running over WiFi or cellular data networks.

The need to re-route voice and fax traffic from the traditional circuit-switched networks onto packet networks has led to the development of interface equipment between the two networks, generally referred to as media gateways. The processing of voice and fax signals in gateway and access equipment is done according to industry-wide standards. These standards are needed to ensure that all traditional telephony traffic is seamlessly switched and routed over the packet network and vice versa. The industry migration into a network that is utilizing IP end-to-end has also created a need for a new functionality to mediate between different VoIP networks. This includes protocol translation as well as security services, business continuity and voice quality enforcement and is provided by stand-alone SBCs as well as Enterprise SBC (E-SBC) functionality integrated into the gateway.

Packet networks differ fundamentally from circuit-switched networks in that the packet network’s resources and infrastructure can be shared simultaneously by several users and bandwidth can be flexibly allocated. Packet-based communications systems format the information to be transmitted, such as e-mail, voice, fax and data, into a series of smaller digital packages of information called packets. Each of these packets is then transmitted over the network and is reassembled as a complete communication at the receiving end. The various packet networks employ different network protocols for different applications, priority schemes and addressing formats to ensure reliable communication.

Packet networks offer a number of advantages over circuit-switched networks. Rather than requiring a dedicated circuit for each individual call, packet networks commingle packets of voice, fax and data from several communications sources on a single physical link. This provides superior utilization of network resources, especially in dealing with information sources with bursts of information followed by periods of silence. This superior utilization means that more traffic can be carried over the same amount of network resources.

The integration of voice and data communications makes possible an enrichment of services and an entire range of new, value-added applications, such as unified communications and voice-enabled web sites. In addition, voice traffic over packet networks is usually compressed to provide a further reduction in the use of or demand for bandwidth. Another recent trend in the VoIP environment, referred to as High Definition VoIP, or HD VoIP, enables the improvement of voice quality. The adoption of both VoIP technology and broadband networks has enabled the development and deployment of high-quality voice coding algorithms that make communication more efficient, effective and natural. HD VoIP allows carriers to differentiate their services with an improved audio experience, with the goal of creating customer loyalty and affinity. It also enables enterprises to provide better, clearer voice services for their employees, which we believe makes them more productive and makes it easier to work across different cultures and accents.

As customers integrate more services into their IP network, they tend to use integrated products that provide all the services they need in one box. Multi-service business routers, or MSBRs, combine all the capabilities of media gateways andMediant session border controllers withand IPmedia media servers) cover the supportspectrum of native data switchinglow, mid and routing. The MSBR enables enterprise customers to connect their branch office networks into the corporate headquarters, andhigh-density applications for service providers to connect their customers into their network data and voice services. Some MSBRs also include an integrated server which can run off-the-shelf applications such as unified communications. This combination enables system integrators and service providers to provide a fully integrated solution for small/medium businesses and enterprise branches, or SMB/E, that includes the voice and data infrastructure and the application in one device.

Moving into the VoIP world, enterprise and service providers have started to use phone devices that inherently produce packets instead of legacy voice, called IP phones. The IP phone is an advanced telephone that connects into the network using VoIP over Ethernet instead of using analog TDM interfaces. Most enterprise telephony systems sold today use IP phones, as well as service providers managed services such as IP Centrex.large enterprises.

In addition to wireline IP telephony, mobile networks have started to use VoIP as well. Mobile VoIP clients, running on smart-phones enable cost effective mobile roaming and allow Internet telephony service providers, or ITSPs, to enter the mobile space. These include mobile VoIP clients for leading smartphones operating systems, such as iOS, Android, Symbian and Windows phones.

Industry Background

Market TrendsINDUSTRY BACKGROUND AND MARKET TRENDS

The networking and telecommunications industries have experiencedcontinue to experience rapid change overchange. Below are some of the last few years. The primary factors driving this change includemajor market trends affecting the following:

The Challengesindustry, as well as the evolving focus of AudioCodes solutions and products.

 DespiteUnified Communications

With the inherent advantagesmove to VoIP and the economic attractiveness of packet voice networking, the transmission of packetnetwork integration between voice and fax posesdata based on Ethernet and IP, enterprises can adopt a unified communications and collaboration solution. Unified communications solutions integrate all means of communications into a single platform, providing on line (e.g., voice, data presence, instant messaging, white boarding and desktop sharing) and off line (voice mail, email and fax) integration into a single communication system shared across a variety of technological challenges. These challenges relateend user devices. Unified communications can be accessed through devices such as PCs, tablets, desktop phones or mobile smartphones. Unified communications can be either on-premises or cloud based. Alternatively, enterprises can adopt a hybrid approach where they keep the real time media path portion of their unified communications on-premises and the applications hosted in the cloud.

Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS)

Unified communications as a service (UCaaS) is a delivery model in which a variety of communication and collaboration applications and services are hosted by a third-party provider in public or private cloud data center and delivered over the Wide Area Network (WAN). In this category, the growth of hosted business services is widely affecting the communications world. Enterprises are adopting hosted and cloud services. Hosted unified communications and contact centers that are driven by Microsoft, BroadSoft, Interactive Intelligence, Genesys and others are gaining traction within the enterprise community and are growing fast as an alternative to on-premises solutions. Microsoft’s Skype for Business unified communications offering is the market leader in this area. Microsoft’s Cloud PBX offering is expected to have a significant impact on the market. However, among other limitations (including regional availability, regulatory and quality of service reliabilityissues), the online version of equipment,this offering does not yet have all the features of the Skype for Business Server. Microsoft is offering a hybrid structure which will mix on-premises functionality for corporate and features, and abilitycall center users, allowing integration with legacy systems, with initial deployment of cloud services, laying the foundation for a smooth transition to provide a good return on investment.

In order to maximize the benefits of using packet networks for the transmission of voice, data and fax, products must be able to address and solve these inherent problems and challenges. These products must also be standards-based to support interoperability among different equipment manufacturers and to allow operation over various networks.full cloud solution at some point.

AudioCodes’ SolutionSIP Trunking

Using ourSIP trunking is a VoIP service based on SIP by which service providers deliver IP telephone connectivity services to customers equipped with SIP-based private branch exchange (IP-PBX) and unified communications facilities. More and more service providers are adopting SIP trunking as the technology of choice for connecting on-premise IP based business voice compression algorithms, industry standards, advanced digital signal processing techniques, VoIP control protocol and security expertise, andsystems. SIP trunking technology is not new. For several years, Over the Top (OTT) service providers, sometimes called alternative service providers or Internet Telephony Service Providers (ITSP), have offered competitive voice communications system design expertise, our products address interoperability challenges, qualityservices based on SIP trunking technology while the traditional telco companies continue to offer legacy PSTN services. Market data shows a clear migration of service problems, security problems and reliability problems facingtelcos moving towards SIP trunking services as well.

All IP Transformation

Many telcos are moving towards a complete replacement of their legacy TDM networks with all-IP networks. Among the VoIP industry. We enable our customersfactors that drive telcos to build voice over packetreplace legacy networks that provide communication quality comparable to, and even better than, traditional telephone networks. Using HDVoIP, voice quality can even surpassare end of life of the quality of traditional TDM networks. We work closelyswitches, real estate that is occupied by these switches and energy savings, together with our customersthe need to compete with the growing alternative service providers. Two typical strategies employed for the business sector by service providers in orderthe move towards app-IP networks are placing CPEs (VoIP Media Gateways, Session Border Controllers or Multi-Service-Business-Routers) to tailor our productsconnect the customers’ legacy or IP equipment or systems to meet their specific needs, assist them in integrating our products within their networks and help them bring their systems into operation on a timely basis. We also work with our customers in deploying their systems in variousIP network, environments.

Utilizing our investment in developing standards-based VoIP protocol support for our products, customers can integrate our products with aor alternatively aggregate large number of industry leading IP-PBXs, unified communications, contact centersTDM links (PRI primarily) at centralized Point of Presences utilizing large capacity VoIP Media Gateways.

Network Function Virtualization (NFV)

NFV is a transition of network infrastructure services to run on virtualized computing infrastructure using cloud technology, management and carrier soft switches. Our interoperability teams test our products against a varietyorchestration solutions to provide network functionalitywith dynamic scaling of otherload as well as self-healing of virtual network functions (VNFs). The significance of software only virtualized products for interoperability, primarily focusingthe telecommunications market is increasing as operators and enterprises are seeking to move away from dedicated hardware platforms to common generic computing platforms that are enabling data centers. NFV aims to leverage standard IT virtualization technology to consolidate potentially all network functions (including SBCs) onto industry standard high volume servers, switches and storage, which could be located in datacenters, network nodes and on the leading VoIP protocols standards: Session Initiation ProtocolSIP.

We believe that the following strengths have enabled usend user premises (vCPE – virtual customer premise equipment and vE-CPE – virtual enterprise customer premise equipment). NFV infrastructure, management and orchestration promises to develop our productsintroduce agility and provideenable quick introduction of new services to our customers:service providers’ networks, similar to those characterizing internet and cloud services. There are a number of challenges that NFV needs to address, including real time performance, scale, resilience, management and automation. These and other technical challenges are being addressed in a network operator-led industry specification group under the auspices of ETSI, an industry standards setting body.

WebRTC

We believeWebRTC is a free, open project that our products possessprovides web browsers and mobile applications with real-time communications (RTC) capabilities via simple application programing interface, or APIs. The WebRTC components have been optimized to best serve this purpose. WebRTC enables rich, high quality RTC applications to be developed for the following advantages:standard web browser, mobile platforms, and content delivery systems, and allows them all to communicate via a common set of protocols. The WebRTC initiative is a project supported by Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and Opera, among others. Over 400 vendors are now active in the market. WebRTC support is available by default mainstream web browsers like Chrome, Edge, Opera and Firefox, and also as a library for developing mobile applications. WebRTC is making a major impact in real time communications as it is natively supported by web browsers and therefore does not require a user to download a specific application. Similar to other open source projects, WebRTC makes a complex technology (such as voice compression and packetization, mitigation of network impairments, security and encryption of real time sessions and peer to peer connectivity of devices regardless of their location) accessible to the big and growing community of web developers, allowing them to quickly and easily develop real time communications services without requiring specific knowhow in voice and video communications. To enable connecting SIP based communication services (e.g., enterprise unified communications or contact centers) with WebRTC, a WebRTC gateway is required to mediate between the incompatible media and signaling of the different systems. WebRTC gateway functionality may be standalone or incorporated into an SBC.

Software-Defined Networking (SDN)

Business StrategySDN is an emerging technology and architecture for designing, building and operating networks that brings a degree of agility and flexibility to networking, similar to what abstraction, virtualization and orchestration have brought to server and storage infrastructures. SDN architecture decouples the network control and forwarding functions enabling the network control to become directly programmable and the underlying infrastructure to be abstracted for applications and network services. Similar to NFV, SDN technology is expected to reduce OPEX and CAPEX associated with building and maintaining networks and also enable innovation.

Mobility

Wireline service providers are facing increased pressure to add new revenue generating services, and can now use their customers’ mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, to deliver next generation mobile services by using VoIP over Wi-Fi or cellular data. Service providers can offer mobility services to reduce customers’ cellular roaming costs and divert roaming user’s revenue from the mobile providers to themselves. In parallel, enterprises are increasingly relying on a mobile workforce and are requiring communications services and solutions that enable employee mobility and productivity.

BUSINESS STRATEGY

AudioCodes’ vision is to become a leading strategic supplier of VoIP and converged VoIP and data solutions for service providers and enterprises worldwide. The following are key elements of our strategy:

Maintain and extend technological leadership. We intend to capitalize on our expertise in voice compression technology and voice signaling protocols and proficiency in designing voice communications systems. We continually upgrade our product lines with additional functionalities, interfaces and densities. We have invested heavily and are committed to continued investment in developing technologies that are key to providing high performance voice, data and fax transmission over packet networks and to be at the forefront of technological evolution in our industry.

Strengthen and expand strategic relationships with key partners and customers. We sell our products to service providers worldwide, leading enterprise channels, regional and global system integrators, global equipment manufacturers and value-added resellers (VAR), in the telecommunications and networking industries and establish and maintain long-term working relationships with them. We work closely with our customers to engineer products and solutions that meet their particular needs. The on-going development and integration cycles frequently result in close working relationships with our customers and partners. By focusing on leading solution vendors, system integrators and channels with large volume potential, we believe that we reach a substantial segment of our potential customer base while controlling the cost and complexity of our marketing efforts.

Expand and enhance the development of highly-integrated products. We plan to continue designing, developing and introducing new product lines and product features that address the increasingly sophisticated needs of our customers. We believe that our knowledge of core technologies and system design expertise enable us to offer better solutions that are more complete and contain more features than competitive alternatives. We believe that the best opportunities for our growth and profitability will come from offering a broad range of highly-integrated network product lines and product features, the integration of data services into our VoIP products, and the expansion into the unified communications and contact center markets.

Build upon existing technologies to penetrate new markets. The technology we developed originally for the OEM market has served us in building products that now sell into the service provider and enterprise markets. The same products and technology can also be used to create application-specific products and solutions, which helps us penetrate and serve various types of customers. Key segments that we focus on are unified communications, contact centers, SIP trunking and hosted services markets that have been adopting VoIP solutions.

Work close to market and customers. Our partners and customers are distributed around the world, and part of our ability to serve them is by being close by. For this reason, we are investing in building local operations in key countries and regions, including sales, marketing and support resources to closely serve our partners and customers.

Develop a network of strategic partners. We sell our products through, or in cooperation with, customers that can offer or certify our products as part of a full-service solution to their customers. We expect to further develop our strategic partner relationships with solution providers, system integrators and other service providers in order to increase our customer base. Our strategic partners include companies such as Microsoft, BroadSoft, Genesys, and Interactive Intelligence.

Acquire complementary businesses and technologies. We may pursue the acquisition of complementary businesses and technologies or the establishment of joint ventures to broaden our product offerings, enhance the features and functionality of our systems, increase our penetration in targeted markets and expand our marketing and distribution capabilities.

Engage enterprise customers in direct sales effort. We are pursuing a strategy of engaging large enterprise customers on a global level, as part of the AudioCodes product fit within leading enterprise solutions, mainly with Microsoft and Genesys. Our ability to engage these enterprises directly enhances our ability to influence procurement decisions. This, in turn, is designed to increase demand, which is expected to allow our business partners to fulfill this demand based on their relationship with AudioCodes.

Develop and expand professional services offering. AudioCodes has a rich portfolio of product-led services. We offer to our customers expert professional services to assist them with design, implementation and support of our products. We are planning to expand our services offering in line with the new products and solutions.

Products  

AUDIOCODES SOLUTIONS, PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

Overview

Our products facilitate the transmission of voice, data and fax over packet networks. We have incorporated our algorithms, technologies and systems design expertise in both our networking and technology product lines.

We typically categorize our revenues from products and services into two main business lines: network and technology. Network products consist of customer premises equipment, or CPE, gateways for the enterprise and service provider (or carrier) markets and of carrier-grade-oriented low- and mid-density media gateways for service providers and ESBCs. Complementing our media gateways and session border gateways as network products are our multi-service business routers (MSBR)., IP phones, media servers, mobile VoIP solutions and value added application products. Sales of network products accounted for approximately 62% of our revenues in 2012, approximately 66% of our revenues in 2013, and approximately 62% of our revenues in 2014.2014 and 65% of our revenues in 2015. Network services accounted for approximately 18% of our revenues in 2012, approximately 18%2013 and 26% of our revenues in 20132014 and approximately 24% of our revenues in 2014.2015.

Technology products are enabling in nature and consist of our chips and boards business products. These are sold primarily to original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs, through distribution channels. Our chips and boards serve as building blocks that our customers incorporate in their products. In contrast, our networking products are used by our customers as part of a broader technological solution and are a box level product that interacts directly with other third party products. Sales of technology products accounted for approximately 19% of our revenues in 2012, approximately 15% of our revenues in 2013, and approximately 13% of our revenues in 2014.2014 and 11% of our revenues in 2015. Technology services accounted for approximately 1% of our revenues in 2012 and 2013 and less than 1% of our revenues in 2014.

Networking products

This line of products includes products that are network level products. Networking products are deployed2014 and in enterprise unified communications networks, service providers residential and access networks, trunking applications in carrier networks, and fixed-mobile convergence applications.

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We support our networking products with a range of professional services.

Technology Products

This line of products serves as a building block for network level products. Our technology products are enabling products that are part of our own or our customers’ products.

Our products are designed to build on our core technologies and competencies extending them both vertically (chips inserted into boards, boards inserted into digital media gateways) and horizontally into different applications for different market segments, such as enterprise, call centers, wireline, cable and wireless.

Our Product Families - Networking Products

Analog Media Gateways for Toll Bypass, Service Provider Access and Enterprise Applications

Our MediaPack^TM family comprises our analog and basic rate interface, or BRI, media gateways for toll bypass, service provider access and enterprise applications. These products are designed to empower the next-generation network by providing cost-effective, cutting-edge technology solutions that deliver voice and fax services to the corporate market, small businesses and home offices. Our analog media gateways for access and enterprise applications provide media streaming functionality while being either controlled by a centralized call agent or used in box VoIP control protocols (SIP, H.323, and MGCP). Convergence of data, voice and fax is achieved by a combination of the media gateway with any IP access technology, eliminating the cost of multiple access circuits.

The MediaPack family includes the MP112, 114, 118 and 124 analog gateways supporting 2, 4, 8 or 124 analog lines respectively, as well as the MP-2xx family of residential and Small Office Home Office (SOHO) gateways (MP-252, MP-262 and MP264) . The MediaPack 262 and 264 (MP-252) are feature-rich SOHO gateways for hosted business telephony. With VDSL2 and Gigabit access multiple antenna wireless LAN connectivity, DECT handsets supporting HD VoIP, bluetooth interface for connecting cellular phones and optional battery backup, it is an advanced, cost-effective all-in-one solution for hosted telephony and unified communications providers. The MP-252 supports ADSL2+ targeting the residential market.

The Mediant Family of Products - Session Border Controllers (SBCs), Digital and Mixed (Digital and Analog) Media Gateways (MGWs),) and Multi-Service Business Routers (MSBRs) for Service Provider Access and Enterprise Applications (MediantTM 500L, 500, 800, 1000, 2000, 3000 Media Gateways and SBC, Mediant4000, 9000 SBCs, Mediant SE and VE Software and virtualized SBCs and Mediant 500L, 500, 800 and 1000 MSBRs),as well as higher capacity Media and Transcoding Gateways for Wireless, Wireline and Cable Service Provider networks (Mediant, 5000 and 8000)

The Mediant^TM product family offers scalability and functionality, providing a full suite of standards compliant control protocols and public switched telephone network, or PSTN, signaling interfaces for a variety of applications in most unified communications, IP-PBX, SIP application and softswitch controlled environments. This product family is compatible with popular voice over IP voice coders and protocols, including code-division multiple access, or CDMA, global system for mobile communications, or GSM, CDMA2000, universal mobile telecommunications service, or UMTS, and Long Term Evolution (LTE), as well as popular narrowband and wideband voice coders used in enterprise and Over the Top networks, such as OPUS SILK, RTA, SPEEX, G.722 and more. It builds on our VoIPerfect® architecture, which is installed in millions of lines worldwide. It is also interoperable with most of the world’s leading vendors.

The Mediant^TM family provides customers with a comprehensive line of different sized gateways and SBCs. Small or medium-sized gateways enable cost-effective solutions for enterprise or small points of presence, as well as entry into fast growing new and emerging markets. The large gateways scale to central office capacities and are designed to meet carriers’ operational requirements. The Mediant family of media gateways is capable of supporting unified communication, contact center and service provider VoIP applications which may be of increased interest to enterprises and service providers.

The Mediant family of products consists of a number of models that offer different capacity, that is the number of concurrent calls or sessions that the gateway or SBC can handle. The capacity of our Mediant products range from approximately 30 concurrent calls/sessions to 24,000 concurrent calls/sessions.

Our Mediant 1000, Mediant 800 Mediant 500 and Mediant500L have three different configurations. The first two are a modular VoIP media gateway and enterprise session border controllers. The other includes multi-service business routers, or MSBRs, which are networking devices that combine multiple multiservice functions such as a media gateway, session border controller, data router, firewall, LAN switch, WAN access and survivability. The MSBR concept is designed to address the needs of service providers that offer hosted Unified Communications and SIP trunking services . The range of interfaces supported on the Mediant 500L, Mediant500, Mediant 800 and Mediant 1000 MSBR include a variety of voice and data (WAN) interfaces.

Our product line specifically designed for the Microsoft unified communications environment, known as Lync, is constantly upgraded to support the latest Microsoft unified communications specifications. These products include Lync qualified IP Phones, enhanced gateways, enterprise session border controllers, survivable branch appliances and OneBox365 (integrated Lync, SBC and MGW for Office365 voice deployments) based on our Mediant family, as well as faxing solutions, auto attendant solutions and SmartTAP, a passive compliance recording solution. The marketing and sales of these products utilizes our growing network of Microsoft VSPs (voice specialized partners) with whom we work closely.

Our SBC technology integrates into all Mediant platforms , except the Mediant5000 and Mediant8000 gateways. It offers secure VoIP and multimedia traversal of firewall, or FW, and network address translation, or NAT, systems, as well as denial of service, or DoS, attack prevention at both the signaling and media layers. These products target the VoIP security, connectivity and Quality of Service (QoS) needs of enterprises and service providers of different sizes, migrating from traditional PSTN connectivity to IP. NAT and FW traversal as necessary to allow VoIP and multimedia sessions to pass from the service provider (“SP”) network to the residential, enterprise or other SP network. Security and DoS attack prevention protects the enterprise or SP networks from fraud attacks that load an application server until it crashes. QoS assurance prioritizes voice sessions, manages a number of concurrent sessions and monitors the quality of voice to make sure voice communications is of high quality and warns if it degrades

The Mediant SBC also provides comprehensive protocol mediation capabilities, which is the translation between two variants of the same VoIP protocol to enable two VoIP systems to communicate with each other. Examples of protocol mediation include connecting an IP PBX with SIP trunk services or connecting between two unified communication systems of different vendors. In addition, ESBCs support remote workers connectivity, enabling unified communications over IP between the enterprise and its workers located outside the premises. The market for these products includes value-added resellers system integrators and service provider channels.

The Mediant 800 and 1000 products can also include an OSN (open solutions network) server module featuring a general purpose CPU and hard disk, allowing hosting of any third-party off-the-shelf application. This solution enables system integrators and software vendors to use these platforms for integrated unified communications solutions.

IPmedia^TM Servers for Enhanced Services and Functionalities

IPmedia^TM platforms are designed to answer the growing market demand for enhanced voice services over packet networks, particularly network-based applications like unified communications, call recording, and conferencing by carriers and application service providers. IPmedia^TM enables our customers to develop and market applications such as unified communications, interactive voice response, call-centers, conferencing and voice-activated personal assistants.

300HD and 400HD Series of High Definition IP Phones

AudioCodes 300 and 400 Series of HD VoIP-enabled IP phones offer a new dimension of voice call quality and clarity for the enterprise and service provider markets. This product line enables us to provide an end-to-end solution which relies heavily on the technological infrastructure and proven track record in providing state-of-the art high quality VoIP products for enterprise, wireline, wireless and cable applications.

The 300 and 400 Series of IP phones meet the demand for high definition VoIP solutions in end-user phones and terminals, providing high voice fidelity, advanced security and features and enhanced user interface. Our IP phones are widely interoperable with numerous IP-PBXs, soft switches and IP-Centrex solutions.

One Voice Operation Center (OVOC)

One Voice Operations Center is a management suite providing full coverage of the entire set of actions required to manage AudioCodes voice network products in a unified communication, contact center or service provider environment. The AudioCodes One Voice Operations Center provides a complete end-to-end voice network control, service assurance capabilities and comprehensive reporting tools.

The AudioCodes One Voice Operations Center uniformly manages, monitors and operates the entire AudioCodes portfolio, including SBCs and Media Gateways

Microsoft SBAs and IP phones.

The key components of One Voice Operation Center are the Element Management System and Session Experience Manager

Element Management System

Our element management system, or EMS, is an advanced solution for centralized, standards-based management of our network products, covering all areas vital to the efficient operations, administration, configuration, provisioning and monitoring of our Mediant^TM and MediaPack^TM VoP gateways, session border controllers and 300/400 IP phones series.

Our EMS offers network equipment providers and system integrators fast setup of medium and large VoP networks with the advantage of a single centralized management system that configures, provisions and monitors all of AudioCodes gateways and session border controllers deployed, either as customer premises equipment, access or core network platforms.

The EMS for IP phones module provides day one management operations such as automatic provisioning and firmware download, user management, comprehensive configuration file templates and mass operations. The EMS for IP phones day by day operation consist of real time dashboard showing per end user the status of the IP phone, as well as showing and forwarding IP phone alarms.

Session Experience Manager (SEM):

Our Session Experience Manager, or SEM, is an integral part of the One Voice Operations Center suite. This software module is built to monitor, analyze, report and control the quality of voice over IP in real-time for enterprise and service providers’ networks. SEM is designed as an intuitive, easy to use solution, which includes an array of advanced tools producing a continuous comprehensive view of voice quality of experience at the enterprise and service provider network and its connecting trunks. Among these tools are network views to map devices and their associated voice quality, graphic illustrations of VoIP call metrics, convenient drill down details of a given call, traffic trend analysis to identify current and future bottlenecks, active and historic alarm display, and flexible pre-defined reports. In addition to VoIP, SEM includes a tool for analyzing fax transmission quality. SEM complements our Element Management System (EMS) by providing comprehensive configuration, monitoring and performance solutions for IT managers and service providers deploying a network of AudioCodes network products.

Session Experience Manager for Lync expansion is an intelligent analysis tool to quickly isolate and remediate real time problems over a VoIP eco system that is comprised of Microsoft Lync and Audiocodes One Voice integrated solution. The SEM for Lync has visibility on all voice calls within the Lync environment, including Lync to Lync, Lync to federated, Lync to remote workers, Lync to Gateway/SBC and Lync to mediation server.

Our Product Families - Technology Products

Voice Over Packet Processors

Our signal processor chips compress and decompress voice, data and fax communications. This enables these communications to be sent from circuit-switched telephone networks to packet networks. Our chips are digital signal processors on which we have embedded our algorithms. These signal processor chips are the basic building blocks used by our customers and us to enable their products to transmit voice, fax and data over packet networks. These chips may be incorporated into our communications boards, media gateway modules and analog media gateways for access and enterprise applications or they may be purchased separately and incorporated into other boards or customer products.

TrunkPack^TMVoIP Communication Boards

Our communications boards are designed to operate in gateways connecting the circuit-switched telephone network to packet networks based on Internet protocols. Our boards comply with VoIP industry standards and allow for interoperability with other gateways. Our boards support standards-based open telecommunications architecture systems and combine our signal processor chips with communications software, signaling software and proprietary hardware architecture to provide a cost efficient interoperable solution for high capacity gateways. We believe that using open architecture permits our customers to bring their systems to market quickly and to integrate our products more easily within their systems.

IPmedia^TM Boards for Enhanced Services and Functionalities

The IPmedia^TM product family is designed to allow OEMs and application partners to provide sophisticated content and services that create revenue streams and customer loyalty through the ability to provide additional services. The IPmedia^TM boards provides voice and fax processing capabilities to enable, together with our partners, an architecture for development and deployment of enhanced services.

Voice and Data Logging Hardware Integration Board Products

The SmartWORKS^TM family of products is our voice and data logging hardware integration board product line. SmartWORKS^TM boards for the call recording and voice voice/data logging industry are compatible with a multitude of private branch exchange, or PBX, telephone system integrations.

Services2015.

To support today’s complex multi-service networks, AudioCodes has developed a comprehensive professional services program intended to provide responsive, preventive, and consultative support of AudioCodes networking products. AudioCodes professional services support networking devices, applications and infrastructures, allowing large organizations and service providers to realize the potential of a high-performance multi-service network. The foundation for AudioCodes professional services is a network life-cycle model based on the four basic phases of planning, design, implementation and operations. The result is a specially designed portfolio of complementary and synergistic service components.

Services accounted for approximately 19% of our revenues in 2012 and 2013, and approximately 22% of our revenues in 2014.2014 and 27% of our revenues in 2015.

AudioCodes Solutions

Solutions for Microsoft Skype for Business

AudioCodes One Voice for Skype for Business includes AudioCodes’ Microsoft-qualified end-to-end voice elements, wide-ranging services and extensive expertise to enhance Microsoft Skype for Business voice implementations. These products and services are suitable for all Microsoft-approved unified communications architectures, including on-premise, cloud-based and hybrid.

Coexistence, Migration and SIP Trunking allow for smooth and controlled migration of existing telephony system or telephony. AudioCodes delivers a comprehensive solution for migration, integration and SIP trunking connectivity. Compatible with virtually any PBX, AudioCodes’ simplified dialing plan AD integration protects investment in legacy equipment.

Security and Fraud Prevention solutions prevent attacks causing voice disruptions, theft of services or other threats exposing a customer’s voice infrastructure. AudioCodes secures the integration of unified communications and external voice services with attack detection and topology hiding.

Devices and Productivity improves employee efficiency while integrating UC into the work environment. AudioCodes delivers desk phone products that are intuitive to work with and deliver excellent quality.

Compliance and recording meets regulatory and compliance requirements. AudioCodes helps businesses address compliance and regulation with E911 location services support and compliance recording.

Resiliency and recovery enables recovery from failures and survival of voice network interruptions. AudioCodes has a broad portfolio of resiliency products and solutions. AudioCodes products are designed for functionality and cost effectiveness.

All-in-One Voice Solution is based on CloudBond™ 365 and enables a wide range of solutions for cloud-hybrid deployments, remote branch offices, PBX replacement and UC pilots.

Skype for Business Management Solutions deliver operational excellence with full life-cycle management. AudioCodes One Voice Operations Center is a management suite providing full coverage of the entire set of actions required to manage a voice network in a Skype for Business unified communications environment.

Enterprise UC and PBX Connectivity

AudioCodes’ products are essential elements of an enterprise telephony network, adding VoIP capabilities to existing TDM equipment, or complementing IP-PBX or unified communications deployments with media gateway, IP phone, and enterprise session border controller (E-SBC) solutions.

AudioCodes’ suite of products provides the scalability, flexibility and reliability needed to aid the successful deployment of best-of-breed, SIP-based enterprise communications systems. The solution delivers SIP and TDM Trunking, analog device connectivity, and enterprise branch survivability.

Managed IP Phone

Comprehensive IP phone management is the key to an excellent user experience. Voice remains the most fundamental method of employee collaboration and the ability to control the user experience is critical for improved productivity.

AudioCodes Managed IP Phones solution defines the IP phone as an IT-managed entity and delivers unique and complete life-cycle management of end-user desktop devices. The solution provides administrators with powerful and easy-to-use tools to simplify tasks such as configuration, troubleshooting and monitoring to increase efficiency and ensure user satisfaction.

With the ability to deploy devices, monitor voice quality, identify problems and fix them rapidly and efficiently, AudioCodes’ solution is designed to deliver employee satisfaction, increased productivity and lower IT expenses.

Solutions for Contact Centers

VoIP and Unified Communications have drastically altered and evolved the business environment in which modern contact centers operate. The new IP Contact Center offers lower costs, greater flexibility, higher customer satisfaction, improved productivity and increased revenue.

AudioCodes VoIP network solutions for Contact Centers are designed to help enterprises and service providers in their transition towards an all-IP voice infrastructure by providing the network elements required to enable and support the smooth operation of the contact center application suite while mitigating the risks of migrating into an IP environment.

NFV

The adoption by service providers of Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and virtualization of the edge enables them to quickly introduce new innovative communication services to their customers without the overhead typically associated with hardware-based solution deployments. Realizing this opportunity requires flexible Virtual Network Function (VNF) Session Border Controllers (SBCs) capable of running both as service provider access and peering SBCs, as well as VNFs on Virtual Enterprise CPE devices (vE-CPE).

AudioCodes offers a comprehensive and flexible set of solutions spanning from vE-CPE devices that can host third party VNFs as well as a scalable virtual SBC. AudioCodes’ virtual SBC runs on any vE-CPE device, as well as in the service provider’s NFV cloud, functioning as an access or peering SBC. By offering a single scalable product, covering all capacity needs with one unified control and management interface, service providers can leverage its deployment and maintenance simplicity to introduce new communications services rapidly and cost-effectively.

SIP Trunking Solutions

AudioCodes’ SIP Trunking solutions are used by service providers deploying SIP Trunking services. These solutions allow service providers to benefit from quick, easy and reliable deployments as well as address their customers’ needs to continue using their existing PBX and IP-PBX systems while migrating from TDM to SIP Trunking services. This migration can be done with minimum business disruption while providing high quality communication services. Additionally, the modular design of AudioCodes SIP Trunking devices enables service providers to leverage SIP Trunking services to allow for quick and easy remote migration to hosted UC services in the future.

PSTN Migration

AudioCodes’ PSTN migration solutions are targeted at fixed-line service providers who are transforming their TDM fixed-line networks to all-IP. The solutions consist of a set of scalable CPE devices, central office gateways, and management and monitoring application suites, working seamlessly together and designed to enable fixed-line providers a quick, reliable and cost-effective path from TDM to All-IP services.

AudioCodes enables fixed-line service providers the ability to benefit from a wide-range of PSTN migration solutions that cover on-premises CPE, street cabinet and central office PSTN to IP migration option, business customers from SOHOs up to large enterprises, PRI, ISDN and analog interface and configuration, and VoIP gateway, Session Border Controller (SBC), routing and NFV applications.

UCaaS

Designed to enable reliable and quality delivery of cloud-based services, AudioCodes’ UCaaS solutions are comprised of a comprehensive portfolio of hardware and software products. AudioCodes solutions are used by service providers who are deploying Cloud and Hosted UC services. Based on their survivability, resiliency, high voice quality assurance, and advanced remote management features, AudioCodes’ UCaaS solutions enable service providers to deliver to their business customers reliable and quality cloud services, as well as provide them with the confidence they need to place their key communications functions in the cloud.

MobilityPLUS

AudioCodes MobilityPLUS enables operators to offer mobile voice, video and messaging, over cellular data and Wi-Fi networks.

AudioCodes MobilityPLUS offers a large-scale platform, comprised of comprehensive backend servers, cellular to Wi-Fi handover and a variety of white label mobile applications. AudioCodes MobilityPLUS supports Apple® iOS™ and Google Android™ for smartphones, tablets, soft clients supporting Microsoft Windows™ for PCs and laptops and WebRTC client for web browsers.

VocaNom

AudioCodes VocaNOM is a cloud-driven voice communication application for businesses and organizations allowing voice-based dialing and routing. VocaNom is improving internal communication between employees and staff as well as external calls to suppliers (outbound) or from customers (inbound). VocaNOM provides a solution for the problem of managing multiple business contacts and dialing on the go. The solution allows dialing by voice as the organizational phone directory is fully synced into the cloud alongside the speech recognition algorithms designed by AudioCodes.

AUDIOCODES PRODUCTS

Core Technologies

We believe that one of our key competitive advantages is our broad base of core technologies ranging from advanced voice compression algorithms to complex architecture system design. We have developed and continue to build on a number of key technology areas. We have named our cross platform core technology VoIPerfect. It essentially allows us to leverage the same feature set and interoperability with other products across our product lines.

Narrowband and Wideband (HDVoIP) Voice Compression Algorithms

Voice compression techniques are essential for the transmission of voice over packet networks. Voice compression exploits redundancies within a voice signal to reduce the bit rate required to digitally represent the voice signal, from 64 kilobits per second, or kbps, down to low bit rates ranging from 5.3 kbps to 8 kbps, while still maintaining acceptable voice quality. A bit is a unit of data. Different voice compression algorithms, or coders, make certain tradeoffs between voice quality, bit rate, delay and complexity to satisfy various network requirements. Use of voice activity detection techniques and silence removal techniques further reduce the transmission rate by detecting the silence periods embedded in the voice flow and discarding the information packets which do not contribute to voice intelligibility.

We are one of the innovators in developing low bit rate voice compression technologies. Our patented MP-MLQTM coder was adopted in 1995 by the ITU as the basis for the G.723.1 voice coding standard for audio/visual applications over circuit-switched telephone networks. By adhering to this standard, system manufacturers guarantee the interoperability of their equipment with the equipment of other vendors.

We also provide wideband compression techniques that provide high definition VoIP quality, which expands the sampled frequency range from the traditional narrowband frequency range of 3.3Khz to over 7Khz, providing better voice quality and intelligibility, and a better user expertise. This technology is expanding and is expected to become a de-facto standard for future VoIP communications.

Advanced Digital Signal Processing Algorithms

To provide a complete voice over packet communications solution, we have developed a library of digital signal processing functions designed to complement voice compression coders with additional functionality, including: echo cancellation; voice activity detection; facsimile and data modem processing; and telephony signaling processing. Our extensive experience and expertise in designing advanced digital signal processing solutions allows us to implement algorithms using minimal processing memory and power resources.

Our algorithms include:

Echo cancellation.Low bit rate voice compression techniques introduce considerable delay, necessitating the use of echo cancellation algorithms. The key performance criterion of an echo canceller is its ability to deal with large echo reflections, long echo delays, fast changing echo characteristics, diverse telecommunications equipment and network effects. Our technology achieves low residual echo and fast response time to render echo effects virtually unnoticeable.

Fax transmission.There are two widely used techniques for real time transmission of fax over networks based on Internet protocols: fax relay and fax spoofing. Fax relay takes place when a fax is sent from a fax machine through a gateway over networks based on Internet protocols in real time to a fax machine at the other end of the network. At the gateway, the analog fax signals are demodulated back into digital data, converted into packets, routed over the packet network and reassembled at the receiving end. Fax relay is used when the round trip network delay is small (typically below one second). When the round trip network delay increases, one of the fax machines may time out while waiting for a response from the other fax machine to arrive.

Data modem technology.We have developed data modem technologies that facilitate data relay over packet networks. Our data modem relay software algorithms support all existing data modem standards up to a bit rate of 14.4 kbps.

Telephony signaling processing.Various telephony signaling standards and protocols are employed to route calls over the traditional telephone network, some of which use “in-band” methods, which means that the signaling tones are sent over the telephone line just like the voice signal. As a result, in-band signaling tones may have to undergo the compression process just like the voice signal. Most low bit-rate voice coders, however, are optimized for speech signals and exhibit poor tone transfer performance. To overcome this, our processors are equipped with tone detection and tone generation algorithms. To provide seamless transparency between the traditional telephone network and packet networks for signaling, we employ various digital signal processing techniques for efficient tone processing.

Voice Communications Software

To transmit the compressed voice and fax over packet networks, voice packetization processes are required to construct and deconstruct each packet of data for transmission. The processing involves breaking up information into packets and adding address and control fields information according to the specifications of the appropriate packet network protocol. In addition, the software provides the interface with the signal processors and addresses packet delay and packet loss issues.

Media Processing

Our media processing products provide the enabling technology and platforms for developing enhanced voice service applications for legacy and next generation networks. We have developed media processing technologies such as message recording/playback, announcements, voice coding and mixing and call progress tone detection that enable our customers to develop and offer advanced revenue generating services such as conferencing, network announcements, voice mail and interactive voice response.

Our media processing technology is integrated into our enabling technology platforms like Voice over Packet processors and VoIP blades, as well as into our network platforms like the Mediant media gateways and the IPMedia media servers. The same technology is also integrated into our multi-service business gateways, enabling the use of these platforms to run third party VoIP software, offloading media processing from the host CPU.

Addressing Multiple Networks and Standards Concurrently

Convergence of wireline and wireless networks is becoming a key driver for deployment of voice over packet networks, enabling operators to use common equipment for both networks, thus lowering capital expenditures and operating expenses, while offering enriched services.

Our voice over packet products provide a cost-effective solution for these convergence needs, complying with the requirements of broadband Wirelinewireline operators using xDSL technologies, Cablecable operators, mobile operators, FTTx operators, Internet telephony service providers, or ITSPs, and virtual network Operatorsoperators (VNOs). This includes support for relevant vocoders (wireline and wireless concurrently), interfaces and protocols.

Our products are also positioned to support the requirement of all types of enterprise customers. From SOHO, SMB all the way up to large enterprises, our products can provide integrated VoIP services and service provider access to enterprises in multiple vertical markets.

Hardware Architectures for Dense Multi-Trunk Voice over Packet Systems

Our voice over packet product offerings include high density, multi-trunk voice over packet systems for standards-based open telecommunications platforms in access equipment. Multi-trunk processing is centered aroundon a design encompassing two key processing elements, signal processors performing voice, fax and data processing and a communications processor. Overall system performance, reliability, capacity, size, cost and power consumption are optimized, based on our hardware architecture, which supports high throughput rates for multi-trunk processing. On-board efficient network and system interfaces relieve the system controller from extensive real time data transfer and processing of data streams.

Carrier Grade System Expertise

To provide state of the art carrier grade media gateways, we have developed a wide expertise in a number of fields essential to such a product line. We have developed or integrated the various components required to implement a full digital media gateway solution that behaves as a unified entity to the external world. This required a major investment in adapting standard cPCI and MicroTCA (AMC) platforms to our needs. Such adaptation included optimizing power supply and cooling requirements, adding centralized shelf controllers, fabric switches and alarm cards to the chassis. Another aspect of the expertise we developed relates to high availability software and hardware design. High availability is a required feature in any carrier grade media gateway platform. We have also developed a sophisticated EMS to complete our offering. Our EMS enables the user to provision and monitor a number of media gateways from a centralized location.

Networking products

Session Border Controllers (SBC) and Media Gateways (MG)

AudioCodes’ Mediant family of Session Border Controllers (SBCs) and Media Gateways (MG) is a line of versatile IP communications platforms that connect VoIP and TDM networks.

SBCs are deployed at the border between the enterprise and the service provider. In the enterprise environment, they form an effective demarcation point between a business’s VoIP network and a service provider’s SIP Trunk, performing SIP protocol mediation and media handling (interoperability) and securing the enterprise VoIP network. In the service provider core, SBC provides security and protocol normalization.

The Mediant SBC family includes a range of platforms that offer cost-efficient SBC and hybrid gateway functionality (SIP to TDM, SIP to SIP).

AudioCodes’ family of High-Availability Media Gateways is a line of highly reliable IP communications platforms that connect VoIP and TDM networks. Featuring NEBS Level 3 compliance and cost-effective redundancy configurations, the AudioCodes platforms meet the stringent availability requirements of service providers. AudioCodes High-Availability Media Gateways serve as an efficient junction between VoIP networks, legacy TDM equipment, and the PSTN. They interwork with most market-leading softswitches, application servers, IP-PBXs, and other standards-based VoIP elements.

AudioCodes’ MediaPack 1xx series of Analog VoIP Gateways are cost-effective, stand-alone VoIP gateways that provide superior voice technology for connecting legacy telephones, fax machines and PBX systems with IP telephony networks and IP-based PBX systems. The MediaPack 1xx gateways are fully interoperable with leading softswitches and SIP servers and support a wide variety of service provider and enterprise applications.

Service providers can use MediaPack gateways to connect Multi-Tenant Units (MTUs), IP Centrex subscribers, payphones, and rural users over wireless and satellite links.

Enterprises can use MediaPack gateways to connect their legacy PBX systems over an IP infrastructure. In addition, in IP Centrex and central IP-PBX applications, MediaPack enhances remote location availability and provides Stand Alone Survivability (SAS) when there is no IP connection between branch locations and a central SIP server, SIP proxy or central IP-PBX.

The new MediaPack(MP)-1288 is a high density analog media gateway. Supporting up to 288 analog ports in a compact 3U chassis. The MP-1288 offers a cost-effective solution for organizations transitioning to all-IP that need to integrate large numbers of analog devices into their new infrastructure. The MP-1288 enables these organizations to protect the investment made in their analog devices and cabling while enjoying the functional and cost benefit of the move to the all-IP infrastructure.

Multi-Service Business Routers (MSBR)

AudioCodes’ family of Multi-Service Business Routers (MSBR) offers service providers a range of all-in-one SOHO, SMB and SME routers combining access, data, voice and security onto a single device. It is designed for managed data, SIP trunking, hosted PBX, and cloud-based services, and allows service providers to deploy flexible and cost-effective solutions.

AudioCodes’ Multi-Service Business Routers allows service providers to provide their business customers much more than just an internet connection. In addition to its integrated powerful routing and security software, the MSBR also features a multi-core architecture that aids consistent high performance, allowing end customers to maximize their broadband connections for both data and voice applications.

Service providers offering hosted PBX or SIP trunking communication services will benefit from AudioCodes’ MSBR, which includes integrated voice gateway, analog and digital interfaces with various codecs that support analog phones, fax, PBX and PSTN connectivity, and session border controllers (SBC).

IP Phones

The AudioCodes 400HD series of IP Phones includes a range of easy-to-use, feature-rich products for the service provider hosted services, enterprise IP telephony and contact center markets. Based on the same advanced, field-proven underlying technology as our other VoIP products, AudioCodes high quality IP phones enable systems integrators and end-customers to build end-to-end VoIP solutions.

Managed IP Phones solution

AudioCodes IP phones can be offered as part of our of Managed IP Phones solution which defines the IP phone as an IT-managed entity and delivers complete life-cycle management of end-user desktop devices.

CloudBond 365

AudioCodes CloudBond™ 365 is a modular, adaptable solution for the data center, customer premises or the branch. A versatile all-in-one Skype for Business appliance designed for hybrid environments, it combines Skype for Business server, the Cloud-PBX and the service provider’s voice services. While Microsoft’s Cloud PBX offering is still evolving into a full PBX replacement, CloudBond 365 bridges the gap, creating the critical bond between tUC and the developing cloud business.

Survivable Branch Appliances

AudioCodes’ family of Survivable Branch Appliances (SBA) is a line of enterprise-class integrated CPEs designed to ensure access to data and voice services in the event of a WAN outage. AudioCodes SBAs are an element in multisite Skype for Business deployments, and are fully certified by Microsoft for use with Skype for Business Server.

A Survivable Branch Appliance (SBA) is a hardware device that ensures the availability of enterprise-wide voice service and voice mail. It also contains a public switched telephone network (PSTN) gateway for use in the event of VoIP failure. As part of our One Voice for Skype for Business portfolio, AudioCodes offers Survivable Branch Appliances that fit any enterprise location size, providing branch office voice resiliency for up to 1000 users.

One Voice Operations Center

AudioCodes One Voice Operations Center (OVOC) is a suite of life-cycle management applications for large scale cloud or premise-based unified communications deployments. OVOC is a management suite providing full coverage of the entire set of actions required to manage a voice network in a Unified Communications environment. It provides a powerful Network Operation Center (NOC), a complete end-to-end network control, service assurance capabilities and comprehensive optimization and future planning tools. The AudioCodes One Voice Operations Center manages, monitors and operates the entire AudioCodes One Voice portfolio, including SBCs and Media Gateways, Microsoft SBAs and IP phones.

The AudioCodes’ Element Management System (EMS) is an advanced solution for centralized, standards-based management of AudioCodes’ One Voice™ product portfolio including the Mediant VoIP product family, MediaPack Media Gateways, Microsoft Skype for Business Survivable Branch Appliances, and 400HD IP phones family. AudioCodes’ EMS covers all aspects of efficient operation, administration, management and provisioning of these voice network products. AudioCodes’ EMS enables service providers, hosted services and large enterprises deploying Unified Communications networks to cost-effectively manage their voice network throughout its complete life cycle.

Extending the EMS basic capabilities, the SBA Pro Connect is a centralized, mass installation of Microsoft SBA software standalone application and covers mass Microsoft Cumulative Updates, mass Microsoft SBA version upgrades, progress monitoring and notification, scheduled installation and performance of mass upgrades on all devices or on selected groups.

AudioCodes Session Experience Manager (SEM) is an intelligent analysis tool that quickly isolates and remediates real time problems over a VoIP eco system, comprised of Microsoft Skype for Business and AudioCodes One Voice integrated solution. SEM provides end-to-end monitoring and troubleshooting for the entire Skype for Business voice network. By leveraging SEM, IT managers and administrators of hosted and managed services can quickly identify, fix and prevent issues that can affect Skype for Business users’ voice experience.

Managing the dial plan and call routing rules of multi-site, multi-vendor enterprise VoIP networks can be an extremely complicated activity. AudioCodes Routing Manager (ARM) delivers a powerful, innovative solution to this problem by enabling centralized control of all session routing decisions. Through ARM’s highly intuitive graphical user interface, system administrators are now able to design and modify their voice network topologies and call routing policies from a single location, resulting in significant time and cost savings. Time-consuming tasks such as adding a new PSTN or SIP trunk interconnection, adding a new branch office or modifying individual users’ calling privileges can be carried out simply and rapidly.

Mobility Plus

AudioCodes MobilityPLUS is a Mobile VoIP (mVoIP) Solution from AudioCodes comprised of a Client Management System (CMS) and a variety of Mobile Soft Clients for leading Mobile Operating Systems and Smartphones. MobilityPLUS is currently available for leading smartphone operating systems including iOS and Android.

VocaNOM

AudioCodes VocaNOM allows callers to say the name of a person or a department and be automatically transferred to the requested party, thus, relieving the need for searching for phone numbers or waiting to speak to an operator. The solution can be used by external users and by company personnel for internal calls. Combining powerful speech recognition with a simple-to-use conversational interface, VocaNOM provides reliable, 24x7 call routing for organizations.

SmartTAP Call Recording

AudioCodes SmartTAP Call Recording is an enterprise-wide compliance and liability recorder supporting Skype for Business. Though most recorders in the market focus on Contact Center features, SmartTAP is deployed across the enterprise to capture calls, either on-demand or, in some cases, full time, when calls about compliance and liability occur more frequently. With an integral Skype for Business recording toolbar, enterprise users can record with SmartTAP anywhere and anytime they are on Skype for Business calls. SmartTAP can initially be deployed on a small scale and be scaled up to support many thousands of users using the product’s linear scalability feature.

Auto Attendant

AudioCodes Auto Attendant is a powerful and flexible tool for managing inbound calls and delivering them efficiently to the correct destination based on the caller’s selection. AudioCodes Auto Attendant supports advanced call queuing for Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) based on different routing modes and agent availability.

As part of AudioCodes One Voice for Skype for Business offering, AudioCodes’ Auto Attendant application can be deployed together with AudioCodes’ Survivable Branch Appliances (SBA) in branch offices to complement the Skype for Business Response Group Service (RGS) when the connection with the central servers is lost. AudioCodes Auto Attendant is a pure software application which can also be deployed on standard server hardware.

Fax Server

AudioCodes’ Fax Server is a powerful and flexible tool for managing inbound and outbound enterprise fax transmissions. The Fax Server application is part of AudioCodes One Voice for Skype for Business, a unified product and service program intended to simplify and accelerate voice-enablement of Microsoft UC implementations. AudioCodes Fax Server is a software application which can be deployed on a standard server or on AudioCodes Mediant SBC/media gateways and Survivable Branch Appliances (SBA) in branch offices. For multi-site organizations the Fax Server application may be deployed at branch offices or as a centralized application in the datacenter serving all remote branches.

SIP Phone Support

AudioCodes SIP Phone Support (SPS) is a value-added application for AudioCodes Mediant Session Border Controllers (SBC) and gateways that enables smooth connectivity between IP DECT devices and Skype for Business. By connecting Skype for Business with IP DECT phones, SPS enables campus mobility for Microsoft UC deployments including advanced features such as simultaneous ringing, enhanced presence, Active Directory integration and seamless handover between DECT base stations.

SOHO Routers

AudioCodes’ family of SOHO Routers offers service providers a range of all-in-one SOHO and small businesses routers combining access, data and voice onto a single device. It is perfectly suited for managed data, SIP trunking, hosted PBX, and cloud-based services, and allows service providers to deploy flexible and cost-effective solutions. Service providers offering hosted PBX or SIP trunking communication services will benefit from AudioCodes’ All-in-One SOHO Routers with built-in multiple WAN access interfaces, LAN and Wi-Fi connectivity, DECT support, analog phones and fax interfaces and integrated MicroPBX with multi-line and multi-extensions support.

TECHNOLOGY PRODUCTS

Voice over Packet Processors

Our signal processor chips compress and decompress voice, data and fax communications. This enables these communications to be sent from circuit-switched telephone networks to packet networks. Our chips are digital signal processors on which we have embedded our algorithms. These signal processor chips are the basic building blocks used by our customers and us to enable their products to transmit voice, fax and data over packet networks. These chips may be incorporated into our communications boards, media gateway modules and analog media gateways for access and enterprise applications or they may be purchased separately and incorporated into other boards or customer products.

TrunkPack^TMVoIP Communication Boards

Our communications boards are designed to operate in gateways connecting the circuit-switched telephone network to packet networks based on Internet protocols. Our boards comply with VoIP industry standards and allow for interoperability with other gateways. Our boards support standards-based open telecommunications architecture systems and combine our signal processor chips with communications software, signaling software and proprietary hardware architecture to provide a cost efficient interoperable solution for high capacity gateways. We believe that using open architecture permits our customers to bring their systems to market quickly and to integrate our products more easily within their systems.

IPmedia^TM Boards for Enhanced Services and Functionalities

The IPmedia^TM product family is designed to allow OEMs and application partners to provide sophisticated content and services that create revenue streams and customer loyalty through the ability to provide additional services. The IPmedia ^TM boards provides voice and fax processing capabilities to enable, together with our partners, an architecture for development and deployment of enhanced services.

Voice and Data Logging Hardware Integration Board Products

The SmartWORKS^TM family of products is our voice and data logging hardware integration board product line. SmartWORKS^TM boards for the call recording and voice voice/data logging industry are compatible with a multitude of private branch exchange, or PBX, telephone system integrations.

AudioCodes Services

AudioCodes offers a comprehensive portfolio of global planning, implementation, operations and support services. AudioCodes’ The Voice Experts @ Your Service program allows partners to complement their own services offering with our modular portfolio of Professional Services. The result is a complete network life-cycle model. Our Professional Services portfolio enables seamless integration, high availability, and non-stop scalability to meet business and network demands.

AudioCodes offers flexible technical support services that ensure customer care and optimized network performance and availability. AudioCodes is committed to providing customers and partners with the most comprehensive, qualified customer support. Our global customer support team delivers customer-oriented technical support, training, and consulting that enhances the value provided by AudioCodes products.

AudioCodes Academy offers a comprehensive set of technical training courses for AudioCodes’ partners and customers. By providing several levels of certification, distinct training programs and a combination of theory and hands-on studies, the academy is built to help system integrators, resellers, and distributors equip their people with the necessary skills to deploy and maintain AudioCodes networking technology in the field.

Customers

Our customers consist of service providers, enterprises and OEM customers.

Our service provider customers include a range of tier 1, 2 and 3 services providers that deploy our solution as part of their voice service or UC offering for their business customers. Our solutions are deployed both at the customer premise and at the service core to provide connectivity and high-quality voice services. AudioCodes range of products and wide interoperability allows service providers to deploy our solutions in practically any environment (e.g. together with BroadSoft, Huawei, Alcatel, MetaSwitch) and for a wide range of customer scale.

Our enterprise customers include a range of Fortune 1000 organizations as well as smaller enterprises primarily via channels (such as distributors), OEMs,that use our equipment to enable their UC solution. Our solutions are sold to enterprise customer through a wide network equipment providersof resellers in over 100 countries. AudioCodes solutions are enabling enterprises to smoothly migrate their communications infrastructure to all-IP UC solution.

AudioCodes OEM customers include vendors that leverage on AudioCodes technology and systems integrators. Historically, we have derived the majority of our revenues from salesquality to a small number of customers. The identities of our principal customers have changeddeliver VoIP products and we expect that they will continue to change, from year to year.solutions. Historically, a substantial portion of our revenue has been derived from large purchases by a small numberOEM customers that sold our technology products as part of original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs, and network equipment providers, or NEPs, systems integrators and distributors. ScanSource Communications Group, our largest customer, accounted for 13.7% of our revenues in 2012, 17.8% of our revenues in 2013 and 14.9% of our revenues in 2014. In addition, sales to Westcon Group accounted for 10.5% or our revenues in 2014. Our top three customers accounted for approximately 25.3% of our revenues in 2012, 27.8% of our revenues in 2013 and 27.7% of our revenues in 2014.their voice solution.

Sales and Marketing

Our sales and marketing strategy is to secure the leading channels and system integrators in each region, partner with leading application companies and achieve design wins with network equipment providers in our targeted markets. We select our partners based on their ability to provide effective field sales, marketing communications and technical support to our customers. In addition, we engage in direct sales and marketing with significant operators and enterprises. Prospective customers and channels generally must make a significant commitment of resources to test and evaluate our products and to integrate them into larger systems, networks and applications. As a result, our sales process is often subject to delays associated with lengthy approval processes that typically accompany the design and testing of new communications equipment. For these reasons, the sales cycles of our products to new customers are often lengthy,lengthy; averaging approximately six to twelve months after achieving a design win. This time may be further extended because of internal testing, field trials and requests for the addition or customization of features.

We market our products in the United States, Europe, Asia, Latin America and Israel primarily through a direct sales force. We have invested significant resources in setting up local sales forces giving us a presence in relevant markets. We have given particular emphasis to emerging markets such as Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe in addition to continuing to sell our products in developed countries.

We have generally entered into a combination of exclusive and non-exclusive sales representation agreements with these customers in each of the major countries in which we do business. These agreements are typically for renewable 12-month terms, are terminable at will by us upon 90 days' notice, and do not commit the customer to any minimum sales of our products to third parties. Some of our customers have the ability to return some of the products they have previously purchased and purchase more up to date models.

In 2014, we continued to enhance our field marketing efforts with direct touch enterprise engagements, along with channel recruitments and generic marketing activities including tradeshows, webinars, seminars, on-line and social marketing. The AudioCodes One Voice positioning is strongly emphasized in our marketing efforts.

In January 2013, we introduced the One Voice marketing message which positions AudioCodes as a one-stop-vendor for the voice connectivity needs of various enterprise applications. The marketing campaign started with the positioning of One Voice for Lync,Skype for Business (now called Skype for Business), which presented the AudioCodes value proposition as a vendor of comprehensive voice networking for Microsoft Lync unified communications. Additionally, One Voice for Lync positions AudioCodes as a vendor that can deliver end-to-end support and that offers value-added professional services including design, implementation, and network readiness assessment, among others. We later also introduced One Voice for Hosted Services which similarly positions AudioCodes as a one-stop vendor for Operators hosted services, mainly in collaboration with Broadsoft. AudioCodes believes it can deliver a full suite of voice and networking equipment that is required to connect business customers to an operator’s network.

Throughout 2015, we continued to enhance our field marketing efforts with direct touch enterprise engagements, along with channel recruitments and generic marketing activities including tradeshows, webinars, seminars, on-line and social marketing. The AudioCodes One Voice positioning is strongly emphasized in our marketing efforts.

Manufacturing

Some of our components are obtained from single suppliers. For example, Texas Instruments Incorporated supplies all of our DSP components, while Motorola and Cavium Networks provide embedded CPU and network processors. Other components are generic in nature and we believe they can be obtained from multiple suppliers.

We have not entered into any long-term supply agreements. However, we have worked for years in several countries with established global manufacturing leaders such as Flextronics and have a good experience with their level of commitment and ability to deliver. To date, we have been able to obtain sufficient amounts of these components to meet our needs and do not foresee any supply difficulty in obtaining timely delivery of any parts or components. However, an interruption in supply from any of these sources, especially with regard to DSP components from Texas Instruments Incorporated and CPU and network processors from both Cavium Networks and Motorola, or an unexpected termination of the manufacture of certain electronic components, could disrupt production, thereby adversely affecting our results. We generally maintain an inventory of critical components used in the manufacture and assembly of our products although our inventory of signal processor chips would likely not be sufficient in the event that we had to engage an alternate supplier for these components.

We utilize contract manufacturing for substantially all of our manufacturing processes. Most of our manufacturing is carried out by third-party subcontractors in Israel and China. Our internal manufacturing activities consist primarily of the production of prototypes, test engineering, materials purchasing and inspection, final product configuration and quality control and assurance.

In addition, we have engaged several original design manufacturers, or ODM, based in Asia to design and manufacture some of our products. We may engage additional ODMs in the future. Termination of our commercial relationship with an ODM or the discontinuance of manufacturing of products by an ODM would negatively affect our business operations.

We are obligated under certain agreements with our suppliers to purchase goods and to purchase excess inventory. Aggregate non-cancellable obligations under these agreements as of December 31, 20142015 were approximately $13.4$12.7 million.

Industry Standards and Government Regulations

Our products must comply with industry standards relating to telecommunications equipment. Before completing sales in a country, our products must comply with local telecommunications standards, recommendations of quasi-regulatory authorities and recommendations of standards-setting committees. In addition, public carriers require that equipment connected to their networks comply with their own standards. Telecommunication-related policies and regulations are continuously reviewed by governmental and industry standards-setting organizations and are always subject to amendment or change. Although we believe that our products currently meet applicable industry and government standards, we cannot be sure that our products will comply with future standards.

We are subject to telecommunication industry regulations and requirements set by telecommunication carriers that address a wide range of areas including quality, final testing, safety, packaging and use of environmentally friendly components. We comply with the European Union’s Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (under certain exemptions) that requires telecommunication equipment suppliers to not use some materials that are not environmentally friendly. These materials include cadmium, hexavalent chromium, lead, mercury, polybrominated biphenyls and polybrominatel diphenyl ethers. Under the directive, an extension for compliance was granted with respect to the usage of lead in solders in network infrastructure equipment. We expect that other countries, including countries we operate in, will adopt similar directives or other additional regulations.

Competition

Competition in our industry is intense and we expect competition to increase in the future. Our competitors currently sell products that provide similar benefits to those that we sell. There has been a significant amount of merger and acquisition activity, frequently involving major telecommunications equipment manufacturers acquiring smaller companies, as well as strategic alliances entered into by competitors. We expect that these activities will result in an increasing concentration of market share among these companies, many of whom are our customers.

Our principal competitors in the area of analog media gateways (2 to 24 ports) for access and enterprise are Media5, Grandstream, Innovaphone AG, Sonus Networks, Tainet Communication System Corp., Patton, Sangoma, Dialogic and Edgewater.

Our principal competitors in the residential gateway market are Pirelli Broadband (ADB), Technicolor, Sagemcom, Netgear and Huawei

Huawei.

In the area of low and mid density digital gateways we face competition from companies such as Huawei, Cisco, Dialogic, Genband, Sonus Networks, Patton, Ferrari and Sangoma.

Our competitors in the area of multi-service business gateways are companies such as Cisco, Juniper, Adtran, One Access, Patton, Huawei and Edgewater Networks.

Our competitors with respect to enterprise class session border controller technology include Oracle, Cisco, Avaya, Sonus Networks, Ingate and Edgewater Networks.

Our competitors in the Microsoft LyncSkype for Business certified gateway and session border controller markets include Sonus Networks, Dialogic, Cisco, Ferrari, Sangoma, Media5,, HP, Paton, Ingate and Oracle.

Some of our competitors are also customers of our products and technologies.

Our principal competitors in the sale of signal processing chips are Broadcom, Octasic and Mindspeed. Other indirect competition is arriving from the integration of VoIP functionality into processors (running the VoIP signal processing on generic ARM/MIPS cores), thus decreasing the need for dedicated signal processing chips in a VoIP product, Examples to such manufacturers are Cavium, Texas Instruments and more. Our principal competitors in the communications board market are Dialgic, Sangoma and PIKA Technologies.

Our principal competitors in the area of IP phones are comprised of “best-of-breed” IP phone vendors and end-to-end IP telephony vendors. “Best-of-breed” IP phone vendors sell standard-based SIP phones that can be integrated into any standards-based IP-PBX or hosted IP telephony systems. These competitors include Polycom, HP, Yaelink, Obihai and SNOM. End-to-end IP telephony vendors sell IP phones that only work in their proprietary systems. These competitors include Cisco, Avaya, Alcatel-Lucent, Siemens, Aastra and NEC.

Many of our competitors have the ability to offer vendor-sponsored financing programs to prospective customers. Some of our competitors with broad product portfolios may also be able to offer lower prices on products that compete with ours because of their ability to recoup a loss of margin through sales of other products or services. Additionally, voice, audio and other communications alternatives that compete with our products are being continually introduced.

In the future, we may also develop and introduce other products with new or additional telecommunications capabilities or services. As a result, we may compete directly with VoIP companies and other telecommunications infrastructure and solution providers, some of which may be our current customers. Additional competitors may include companies that currently provide communication software products and services. The ability of some of our competitors to bundle other enhanced services or complete solutions with VoIP products could give these competitors an advantage over us.

Intellectual Property and Proprietary Rights

Our success is dependent in part upon proprietary technology. We rely primarily on a combination of patent, copyright and trade secret laws, as well as confidentiality procedures and contractual provisions, to protect our proprietary rights. We also rely on trademark protection concerning various names and marks that serve to identify it and our products. While our ability to compete may be affected by our ability to protect our intellectual property, we believe that because of the rapid pace of technological change in our industry maintaining our technological leadership and our comprehensive familiarity with all aspects of the technology contained in our signal processors and communication boards is also of primary importance.

We own U.S. patents that relate to our voice compression and session border control technologies. We also actively pursue patent protection in selected other countries of interest to us. In addition to patent protection, we seek to protect our proprietary rights through copyright protection and through restrictions on access to our trade secrets and other proprietary information which we impose through confidentiality agreements with our customers, suppliers, employees and consultants.

There are a number of companies besides us who hold or may acquire patents for various aspects of the technology incorporated in the ITU’s standards or other industry standards or proprietary standards, for example, in the fields of wireless and cable. While we have obtained cross-licenses from some of the holders of these other patents, we have not obtained a license from all of the holders. The holders of these other patents from whom we have not obtained licenses may take the position that we are required to obtain a license from them. Companies that have submitted their technology to the ITU (and generally other industry standards making bodies) for adoption as an industry standard are required by the ITU to undertake to agree to provide licenses to that technology on reasonable terms. Accordingly, we believe that even if we were required to negotiate a license for the use of such technology, we would be able to do so at an acceptable price. Similarly, however, third parties who also participate with respect to the same standards-setting organizations as do we may be able to negotiate a license for use of our proprietary technology at a price acceptable to them, but which may be lower than the price we would otherwise prefer to demand.

Under a pooling agreement dated March 3, 1995, as amended, between AudioCodes and DSP Group, Inc., on the one hand, and France Telecom, Université de Sherbrooke and their agent, Sipro Lab Telecom, on the other hand, we and DSP Group, Inc. granted to France Telecom and Université de Sherbrooke the right to use certain of our specified patents, and any other of our and DSP Group, Inc. intellectual property rights incorporated in the ITU G.723.1 standard. Likewise France Telecom and Université de Sherbrooke granted AudioCodes and DSP Group, Inc. the right to use certain of their patents and any other intellectual property rights incorporated in the G.723.1 standard. In each case, the rights granted are to design, make and use products developed or manufactured for joint contribution to the G.723.1 standard without any payment by any party to the other parties.

In addition, each of the parties to the agreement granted to the other parties the right to license to third parties the patents of any party included in the intellectual property required to meet the G.723.1 standard, in accordance with each licensing party’s standard patent licensing agreement. The agreement provides for the fee structure for licensing to third parties. The agreement provides that certain technical information be shared among the parties, and each of the groups agreed not to assert any patent rights against the other with respect of the authorized use of voice compression products based upon the technical information transferred. Licensing by any of the parties of the parties’ intellectual property incorporated in the G.723.1 standard to third parties is subject to royalties that are specified under the agreement.

Each of the parties to the agreement is free to develop and sell products embodying the intellectual property incorporated into the G.723.1 standard without payment of royalties to other parties, so long as the G.723.1 standard is implemented as is, without modification. The agreement expires upon the last expiration date of any of the AudioCodes, DSP Group, Inc., France Telecom or Université de Sherbrooke patents incorporated in the G.723.1 standard. The parties to the agreement are not the only claimants to technology underlying the G.723.1 standard.

We are aware of parties who may be infringing our technology that is part of the G.723.1 standard. We evaluate these matters on a case by case basis, directly or through our licensing partner. Although we have not yet determined whether to pursue legal action, we may do so in the future. There can be no assurance that any legal action will be successful.

Third parties have claimed, and from time to time in the future may claim, that our past, current or future products infringe their intellectual property rights. Intellectual property litigation is complex and there can be no assurance of a favorable outcome of any litigation. Any future intellectual property litigation, regardless of outcome, could result in substantial expense to us and significant diversion of the efforts of our technical and management personnel. Litigation could also disrupt or otherwise severely impact our relationships with current and potential customers as well as our manufacturing, distribution and sales operations in countries where relevant third party rights are held and where we may be subject to jurisdiction. An adverse determination in any proceeding could subject us to significant liabilities to third parties, require disputed rights to be licensed from such parties, assuming licenses to such rights could be obtained, or require us to cease using such technology and expend significant resources to develop non-infringing technology. We may not be able to obtain a license at an acceptable price.

We have entered into technology licensing fee agreements with third parties. Under these agreements, we agreed to pay the third parties royalties, based on sales of relevant products.

Legal Proceedings

In May 2014, one of our former senior executives filed a claim with the Israeli labor court claiming an amount of NIS 2,500,000 (approximately $625,000) relating to the termination of his employment. WeThe Company denied his allegations and believebelieved that we haveit had valid defenses to this claim. A preliminary hearing was held in January 2015 during which the parties have mutually agreed to refer the dispute to a mediator. In the event that mediation is unsuccessful,During 2015, the parties will continue with the claim in Israeli labor court.agreed to settle this claim.

In November 2013, AudioCodes Brasil Equipamentos Voz Sobre IP Ltda., our Brazilian subsidiary, was served with proceedings in the Labor Court of Sao Paulo, Brazil by a former employee filed a claim against our subsidiary in Brazil alleging that he is entitled to approximately $600,000 as a result of the termination of his employment by ourthe subsidiary. In July 2015, the court declared the suit unfounded. In August 2015, the former employee presented an appeal to the Second Grande Labor Court in Brazil. We have denied allegations and believe that we have valid defenses to thisthe claim.

3. In January 2015, the Manufacturers Association of Israel (“MAI”) filed a claim against us with the Israeli Labor Court for unpaid handling charges, allegedly due for the years 2008 – 2013. The Company’s view is that handling charges to MAI are not due. A hearing took place in February 2016 and another hearing is scheduled for April 2016.

List of Significant Subsidiaries

AudioCodes Inc., our wholly-owned subsidiary, is a Delaware corporation.

AudioCodes Development Ltd., our wholly-owned subsidiary based in Beer Sheva, Israel.

We lease our main facilities, located in Airport City, Lod, Israel, which occupy approximately 200,000 square feet for annual lease payments of approximately $5.4$5.3 million (including management fees). In September 2013, this lease was extended by an additional 10 years, and is scheduled to expire on January 31, 2024.

Our U.S. subsidiary, AudioCodes Inc., leases approximately 28,000 square foot facility in Somerset, New Jersey which was extended for five years until December 31 2018. AudioCodes Inc. also leases offices in Plano, Texas, San Jose, California, Raleigh, North Carolina, Boston, Massachusetts and Mexico. The annual lease payments in 20142015 (including management fees) for all our offices in the United States were approximately $600,000.

We lease additional offices in Israel as well as for our international offices. We do not believe the lease agreements for these offices to be material.

We believe that these properties are sufficient to meet our current needs. However, we may need to increase the size of our current facilities, seek new facilities, close certain facilities or sublease portions of our existing facilities in order to address our needs in the future.

None.

Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates

Our consolidated financial statements are prepared in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles, or U.S. GAAP. These accounting principles require management to make certain estimates, judgments and assumptions based upon information available at the time that they are made, historical experience and various other factors that are believed to be reasonable under the circumstances. These estimates, judgments and assumptions can affect the reported amounts of assets and liabilities as of the date of the financial statements, as well as the reported amounts of revenues and expenses during the periods presented.

On an on-going basis, management evaluates its estimates and judgments, including those related to revenue recognition and allowance for sales returns, allowance for doubtful accounts, inventories, intangible assets, goodwill, income taxes and valuation allowance, stock-based compensation and contingent liabilities. Management bases its estimates and judgments on historical experience and on various other factors that are believed to be reasonable under the circumstances, the results of which form the basis for making judgments about the carrying values of assets and liabilities that are not readily apparent from other sources.

Our management has reviewed theseour critical accounting policies and related disclosures with our Audit Committee. See Note 2 to our Consolidated Financial Statements, which contain additional information regarding our accounting policies and other disclosures required by U.S. GAAP.

Management believes the significant accounting policies that affect its more significant judgments and estimates used in the preparation of its consolidated financial statements and are the most critical to aid in fully understanding and evaluating AudioCodes’ reported financial results include the following:

Revenue Recognition and Allowance for Sales Returns

We generate our revenues primarilymainly from the sale of products. We sell our products through a direct sales force and sales representatives. Our customers include original equipment manufacturers, network equipment providers, systems integrators and distributors in the telecommunications and networking industries, all of whom are considered end-users.

Revenues from products are recognized in accordance with Accounting Standards Codification ("ASC") 605, "Revenue Recognition",, when the following criteria are met: (i) persuasive evidence of an arrangement exists,exists; (ii) delivery of the product has occurred,occurred; (iii) the fee is fixed or determinable and (iv) collectability is probable.reasonably assured. We have no obligation to customers after the date on which products are delivered, other than pursuant to warranty obligations and any applicable right of return. We grant to some of our customers the right of return or the ability to exchange a specific percentage of the total price paid for products they have purchased over a limited period for other products.

We maintain a provision for product returns and exchanges and other incentives. This provision is based on historical sales returns, analysis of credit memo data and other known factors. This provision amounted to $1.2 million in 2012, $1.3 million in 2013as of December 31, 2014 and $1.3$1.7 million in 2014.as of December 31, 2015.

Revenues from the sale of products which were not yet determined to be final sales due to market acceptance or technological compatibility were deferred and included in deferred revenues. In cases where collectability is not probable,reasonably assured, revenues are deferred and recognized upon collection. Revenues from services are recognized ratably over the time of the service agreement, usually one year.

Under Accounting Standards Update (“ASU”) No. 2009-13, Topic 605, “Multiple-Deliverable Revenue Arrangements” (“ASU 2009-13”)., the selling price for a deliverable is based on its vendor-specific objective evidence (“VSOE”) if available, third-party evidence (“TPE”) if VSOE is not available, or estimated selling price (“ESP”) if neither VSOE nor TPE is available. We then recognize revenue on each deliverable in accordance with our policies for product and service revenue recognition. VSOE of selling price is based on the price charged when the element is sold separately. In determining VSOE, we require that a substantial majority of the selling prices fall within a narrow range based on standalone rates. TPE of selling price is established by evaluating largely interchangeable competitor products or services in stand-alone sales to similarly situated customers. However, as our products contain a significant element of proprietary technology and our solutions offer substantially different features and functionality, the comparable pricing of products with similar functionality typically cannot be obtained. Additionally, as we are unable to reliably determine the selling prices of competitors products on a stand-alone basis, we are not typically able to determine TPE. The ESP is established considering multiple factors including, but not limited to, pricing practices in different geographical areas and through different sales channels, gross margin objectives, internal costs, the pricing strategies of our competitors, and industry technology lifecycles. The selling price of the products and professional services was based on ESP. Maintenance selling price was based on VSOE.

We limit the amount of revenue recognition for delivered elements to the amount that is not contingent on the future delivery of products or services or subject to customer-specific return or refund privileges. We evaluate each deliverable in an arrangement to determine whether it represents a separate unit of accounting.

Allowance for Doubtful Accounts

Our trade receivables are derived from sales to customers located primarily in the Americas, the Far East, Israel and Europe. We perform ongoing credit evaluations of our customers and to date have not experienced any material losses from uncollected receivables. An allowance for doubtful accounts is determined with respect to those amounts that we have recognized as revenue and determined to be doubtful of collection. We usually do not require collateral on trade receivables because most of our sales are made to large and well-established companies. On occasion we may purchase credit insurance to cover credit exposure for a portion of our sales and this may mitigate the amount we need to write off as a result of doubtful collections.

Inventories

Inventories are stated at the lower of cost or market value. Cost is determined using the “weighted average cost” method for raw materials and on the basis of direct manufacturing costs for finished products. We periodically evaluate the quantities on hand relative to current and historical selling prices and historical and projected sales volume and technological obsolescence. Based on these evaluations, inventory write-offs are provided to cover risks arising from slow moving items, technological obsolescence, excess inventories, discontinued products and for market prices lower than cost. We wrote-off inventory in a total amount of $2.3 million in 2012, $1.7 million in 2013, and $82,000 in 2014.2014 and $724,000 in 2015.

Intangible assets

As a result of our acquisitions, our balance sheet included acquired intangible assets, in the aggregate amount of approximately $2.9$3.0 million as of December 31, 2012, $4.32014and $4.0 million as of December 31, 2013 and $3.0 million in December 2014.2015.

We allocated the purchase price of the companies we have acquired to the tangible and intangible assets acquired and liabilities assumed based on their estimated fair values. These valuations require management to make significant estimations and assumptions, especially with respect to intangible assets. Critical estimates in valuing intangible assets include future expected cash flows from technology acquired, trade names, backlog and customer relationships. In addition, other factors considered are the brand awareness and market position of the products sold by the acquired companies and assumptions about the period of time the brand will continue to be used in the combined company’s product portfolio. Management’s estimates of fair value are based on assumptions believed to be reasonable, but which are inherently uncertain and unpredictable.

If we did not appropriately allocate these components or we incorrectly estimate the useful lives of these components, our computation of amortization expense may not appropriately reflect the actual impact of these costs over future periods, which will affect our net income.

Intangible assets are comprised of acquired technology, customer relations and licenses.

Intangible assets that are not considered to have an indefinite useful life are amortized using the straight-line basis over their estimated useful lives, which range from four and a half to ten years. Recoverability of these assets is measured by a comparison of the carrying amount of the asset to the undiscounted future cash flows expected to be generated by the assets. If the assets are considered to be impaired, the amount of any impairment is measured as the difference between the carrying value and the fair value of the impaired assets.

During 2012,the years ended December 31, 2013, 2014 and 20142015, no impairment charges were identified.

Goodwill

As a result of our acquisitions, our balance sheet included acquired goodwill in the aggregate amount of approximately $32.1 million as of December 31, 2012 and $33.7 million as of December 31, 2013 and 2014.2014, and $36.2 million as of December 31, 2015. Goodwill represents the excess of the purchase price and related costs over the value assigned to net tangible and identifiable intangible assets of businesses acquired and accounted for under the purchase method. In accordance with ASC 350, “Intangible, Goodwill and Other,” goodwill is not amortized and is tested for impairment at least annually. Our annual impairment test is performed at the end of the fourth quarter each year. If events or indicators of impairment occur between the annual impairment tests, we perform an impairment test of goodwill at that date.

ASC 350 prescribes a two-phase process for impairment testing of goodwill. The first phase screens for impairment, while the second phase (if necessary) measures impairment. Goodwill impairment is deemed to exist if the net book value of a reporting unit exceeds its estimated fair value. In such case, the second phase is then performed, and we measure impairment by comparing the carrying amount of the reporting unit's goodwill to the implied fair value of that goodwill. An impairment loss is recognized in an amount equal to the excess. We have an option to perform a qualitative assessment to determine whether it is more-likely-than-not that the fair value of a reporting unit is less than its carrying amount prior to performing the two-step goodwill impairment test. If this is the case, the two-step goodwill impairment test is required. If it is more-likely-than-not that the fair value of a reporting unit is greater than its carrying amount, the two-step goodwill impairment test is not required.

During 2012,the years ended December 31, 2013, 2014 and 2014,2015, no impairment losses were identified.

Income Taxes and Valuation Allowance

As part of the process of preparing our consolidated financial statements, we are required to estimate our income tax expense in each of the jurisdictions in which we operate. This process involves us estimating our actual current tax exposure, which is accrued as taxes payable, together with assessing temporary differences resulting from differing treatment of items for tax and accounting purposes. These differences result in deferred tax assets, which are included within our consolidated balance sheet. We may record a valuation allowance to reduce our deferred tax assets to the amount of future tax benefit that is more likely than not to be realized.

Although we believe that our estimates are reasonable, there is no assurance that the final tax outcome and the valuation allowance will not be different than those which are reflected in our historical income tax provisions and accruals.

We have filed or are in the process of filing U.S. federal, state and foreign tax returns that might be subject to audit by the respective tax authorities. Although the ultimate outcome is unknown, we believe that adequate amounts have been provided for and any adjustments that may result from tax return audits are not likely to materially adversely affect our consolidated results of operations, financial condition or cash flows.

Stock-based compensation

We account for stock-based compensation in accordance with ASC 718, “Compensation-Stock Compensation.” We utilize the Black-Scholes option pricing model to estimate the fair value of stock-based compensation at the date of grant. The Black-Scholes model requires subjective assumptions regarding dividend yields, expected volatility, expected life of options and risk-free interest rates. These assumptions reflect management’s best estimates. Changes in these inputs and assumptions can materially affect the estimate of fair value and the amount of our stock-based compensation expenses.expenses relating to stock options. We recognized stock-based compensation expense of $1.5 million in 2012, $1.7 million in 2013, and $2.5 million in 2014.2014 and $2.4 million in 2015. As of December 31, 2014,2015, there was approximately $3.7$2.9 million of total unrecognized stock-based compensation expense related to non-vested stock-based compensation arrangements granted by us. As of December 31, 2014,2015, that expense is expected to be recognized over a weighted-average period of 1.11.05 years.

Contingent liabilities

We are, from time to time, involved in claims, lawsuits, government investigations, and other proceedings arising from the ordinary course of our business. We record a provision for a liability when we believe that it is both probable that a liability has been incurred, and the amount can be reasonably estimated. Significant judgment is required to determine both probability and the estimated amount. Such legal proceedings are inherently unpredictable and subject to significant uncertainties, some of which are beyond our control. Should any of these estimates and assumptions change or prove to have been incorrect, it could have a material impact on our results of operations, financial position and cash flows. See Item 4B - “Information on the Company-Business Overview-Legal Proceedings” for a discussion of certain claims against us.

Recent Issued Accounting Pronouncements

See Note 2ab to our Consolidated Financial Statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report.

You should read this discussion with the consolidated financial statements and other financial information included in this Annual Report.

Overview

We design, develop and sell advanced voice over IP, or VoIP, and converged VoIP and data networking products and applications to service providers and enterprises. We are a VoIP technology leader focused on VoIP communications, applications and networking elements, and itsour products are deployed globally in broadband, mobile, cable, and enterprise networks. We provide a range of innovative, cost-effective products including media gateways, session border controllers. multi-service business gateways, residential gateways,routers IP phones, media servers, session border controllers, and value-added applications. Our underlying technology, VoIPerfectHD, relies primarily on our leadership in digital signal processing, or DSP, voice coding and voice processing technologies. Our high definition (“HD”) VoIP technologies and products provide enhanced intelligibility, and a better end user communication experience in emerging voice networks.

Our products enable our customers to build high-quality packet networking equipment and network solutions and provide the building blocks to connect traditional telephone networks to VoIP networks, as well as connecting and securing multimedia communication between different packet-based networks. Our products are sold primarily to leading original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs, system integrators and network equipment providers in the telecommunications and networking industries. We have continued to broaden our offerings, both from internal and external development and through acquisitions, as we have expanded in the last few years from selling chips to boards, subsystems, media gateway systems, media servers, session border controllers and messaging platforms. We have also increased our product portfolio to enhance our position in the market and serve our channels better as a one stop shop for voice over IP hardware.

We have invested significant development resources in complying with Microsoft’s requirements for the purpose of becoming a Microsoft recognized partner for their unified communication solutions for the enterprise market, which are known as Microsoft Lync.Skype for business . We have adapted some of our gateway products, IP phones, session border controllers, survivable branch applications, value added applications and professional services to operate in the Microsoft LyncSkype for business environment. Our products to the LyncSkype for Business Unified Communications market are sold primarily to our channel partners that distribute and integrate the LyncSkype for business solution to enterprises.

In April 2014, the Israeli Office of the Chief Scientist (OCS)of the Israeli Ministry of Economy and Industry (“OCS”) approved a three-year program (2014-2016) for approximately NIS100 million (equal to approximately $25.7$25.6 million based on the exchange rate in effect as of December 31, 2014)2015) to enable us to establish an advanced innovative research and development center for cloud computing technologies and Unified Communications. In May 2014, the research and development center was established. The new research and development center is expected to increase its staff to 100 engineers by the end of 2016. We expect that a significant portion of the cost of this project will be reimbursed to us through grants from the OCS pursuant to this program.program, a relative part of it was already granted to us during the years 2014 and 2015. The grants are subject to conditions relating to grants by the OCS. Funding for the whole term of the program is subject to the continued review and approval of the progress of the project by the OCS.

AudioCodes offers a comprehensive professional services program intended to provide responsive, preventive, and consultative support of AudioCodes networking products. AudioCodes professional services support networking devices, applications and infrastructures, allowing large organizations and service providers to realize the potential of a high-performance multi-service network.

Our headquarters and research and development facilities are located in Israel with research and development extensions in the U.S. and U.K. We have other offices located in Europe, the Far East, and Latin America.

The identities of our principal customers have changed and we expect that they will continue to change, from year to year. Historically, a substantial portion of our revenue has been derived from large purchases by a limited number of original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs, and network equipment providers, or NEPs, systems integrators and distributors. ScanSource Communications Group, our largest customer, accounted for 13.7%17.8%, 14.9% and 15.0% of our revenues in 2012, 17.8% of our revenues inthe years ended December 31, 2013, 2014 and 14.9% or our revenues in 2014.2015, respectively. In addition, Westcon Group accounted for 10.5% and 12.6% of our revenues in 2014.the years ended December 31, 2014 and 2015, respectively. Our top five customers accounted for 31.4%34.2%, 32.0% and 36.1% of our revenues in 2012, 34.2% of our revenues inthe years ended December 31, 2013, 2014 and 32.0% of our revenues in 2014.2015, respectively. If we lose a large customer and fail to add new customers to replace lost revenue, our operating results may be materially adversely affected.

Revenues based on the location of our customers for the last three fiscal years are as follows:

We believe that prospective customers generally are required to make a significant commitment of resources to test and evaluate our products and to integrate them into their larger systems. Our sales process is often subject to delays associated with lengthy approval processes that typically accompany the design and testing of new communications equipment. For these reasons, the sales cycles of our products to new customers are often lengthy, averaging approximately six to twelve months. As a result, we may incur significant selling and product development expenses prior to generating revenues from sales.

The currency of the primary economic environment in which our operations are conducted is the U.S. dollar and, as such, we use the U.S. dollar as our functional currency. Transactions and balances originally denominated in U.S. dollars are presented at their original amounts. All transaction gains and losses from the remeasurement of monetary balance sheet items denominated in non-U.S. dollar currencies are reflected in the statement of operations as financial income or expenses, as appropriate.

The demand for Voice over IP, or VoIP, technology has increased during recent years. In recent years, the shift from traditional circuit-switched networks to next generation packet-switched networks continued to gain momentum. As data traffic becomes the dominant factor in communications, service providers are building and maintaining converged networks for integrated voice and data services. In developed countries, traditional and alternative service providers adopt bundled triple play (voice, video and data) and quadruple play (voice, video, data and mobile) offerings. This trend, enabled by voice and multimedia over IP, has fueled competition among cable, wireline, ISP and mobile operators, increasing the pressure for adopting and deploying VoIP networks. In addition, underdeveloped markets without basic wire line service in countries such as China and India and certain countries in Eastern Europe are adopting the use of VoIP technology to deliver voice and data services that were previously unavailable.

The general economic uncertainty, including disruptions in the world credit and equity markets, has had and continues to have a negative impact on business around the world. This economic environment has had an adverse impact on the technology industry and our major customers. Conditions may continue to be uncertain or may be subject to deterioration which could lead to a reduction in consumer and customer spending overall, which could have an adverse impact on sales of our products. A disruption in the ability of our significant customers to access liquidity could cause serious disruptions or an overall deterioration of their businesses which could lead to a significant reduction in their orders of our products and the inability or failure on their part to meet their payment obligations to us, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our results of operations and liquidity. In addition, any disruption in the ability of customers to access liquidity could lead customers to request longer payment terms from us or long-term financing of their purchases from us. Granting extended payment terms or a significant adverse change in a customer’s financial and/or credit position could also require us to assume greater credit risk relating to that customer’s receivables or could limit our ability to collect receivables related to purchases by that customer. As a result, our allowance for doubtful accounts and write-offs of accounts receivable could increase.

Results of Operations

The following table sets forth the percentage relationships of certain items from our consolidated statements of operations, as a percentage of total revenues for the periods indicated:

Year Ended December 31, 2015 Compared to Year Ended December 31, 2014

Revenues. Revenues decrease 7.8% to $139.8 million in the year ended December 31, 2015 from $151.6 million in the year ended December 31, 2014. The decrease in revenues reflects weakness in our business in Central and Latin America and certain markets in Europe.

Our revenues from products in the year ended December 31, 2015 decreased by 14.0% to $102.0 million, or approximately 73% of total revenues, from $118.6 million, or 78% of total revenues, in the year ended December 31, 2014. The decrease in revenues from products was primarily attributable to the weakness in our business in Central and Latin America and certain markets in Europe.

Our revenues from services in the year ended December 31, 2015 increased by 14.4% to $37.8 million, or approximately 27% of total revenues, from $33.0 million, or 22% of total revenues, in the year ended December 31, 2014. The increase in revenues from services was driven by the growth in support services related to the increase in revenues from products in previous periods and by the growth in professional services.

Cost of Revenues and Gross Profit. Cost of revenues includes the cost of hardware, quality assurance, overhead related to manufacturing activity, technology licensing and royalty fees payable to third parties and royalties payables to the Office of the OCS. Gross profit decreased to $82.8 million in the year ended December 31, 2015 from $89.0 million in the year ended December 31, 2014. Gross profit as a percentage of revenues was 59.2% in the year ended December 31, 2015, compared to 58.7% in the year ended December 31, 2014.

Cost of revenues from products decreased by 13.1% to $47.2 million in the year ended December 31, 2015 from $54.3 million in the year ended December 31, 2014. This decrease is primarily attributable to a decrease in the procurement of materials, in line with the decrease in revenues from products. Gross margin percentage for sales of products remained about the same as in the year ended December 31, 2014.

Cost of revenues from services in the year ended December 31, 2015 increased by 18.2% to $9.7 million from $8.2 million in the year ended December 31, 2014. This increase is primarily attributable to higher support personnel expenses associated with providing services and implementation of our products with service providers as well as with enterprise customers. In the year ended December 31, 2015, the gross margin for sales of services decreased to 74% from 75% in the year ended December 31, 2014. In the year ended December 31, 2015, expenses included in cost of revenues related to stock-based compensation were $101,000 compared to $89,000 in the year ended December 31, 2014.

Research and Development Expenses, net. Research and development expenses, net, consist primarily of salaries and related costs of employees engaged in ongoing research and development activities, development-related raw materials and the cost of subcontractors, less grants from the OCS. Research and development expenses decreased by 13.3% million in the year ended December 31, 2015 to $28.0 million from $32.3 million in the year ended December 31, 2014. As a percentage of total revenues, these expenses were 20.0% in the year ended December 31, 2015 and 21.3% in the year ended December 31, 2014. Research and development expenses decreased primarily as a result of higher grants received from the OCS related to the new program to establish the new research and development center that is described above. In the year ended December 31, 2015, expenses included in research and development expenses related to stock-based compensation were $429,000, compared to $585,000 in the year ended December 31, 2014. Grants recognized from the OCS were $5.4 million in the year ended December 31, 2015, compared to $3.9 million in the year ended December 31, 2014.

Selling and Marketing Expenses. Selling and marketing expenses consist primarily of salaries and related costs of selling and marketing personnel, as well as exhibition, travel and related expenses. Selling and marketing expenses decreased by 4.8% in the year ended December 31, 2015 to $43.4 million from $45.5 million in the year ended December 31, 2014 and increased as a percentage of total revenues to 31.0% in the year ended December 31, 2015 from 30.0% in the year ended December 31, 2014. The decrease on an absolute basis is in line with the decrease in revenues. Expenses included in selling and marketing expenses related to stock-based compensation were $1.1 million in the years ended December 31, 2015 and 2014.

General and Administrative Expenses. General and administrative expenses consist primarily of salaries and related costs of finance, human resources and general management personnel, rent, network and allowance for doubtful accounts, as well as insurance and consultant services expenses. General and administrative expenses increased by 13.7% to $8.7 million in the year ended December 31, 2015, from $7.7 million in the year ended December 31, 2014. As a percentage of total revenues, general and administrative expenses increased to 6.2% in the year ended December 31, 2015 from 5.1% in the year ended December 31, 2014. The increase in general and administrative expenses was primarily due to an increase in the allowance for doubtful accounts and changes in other provisions. In the year ended December 31, 2015, expenses included in general and administrative expenses related to stock-based compensation were $782,000, compared to $767,000 in the year ended December 31, 2014.

Financial Income (Expenses), Net. Financial income (expenses), net consists primarily of interest earned on cash and cash equivalents, marketable securities and bank deposits, net of interest accrued on our bank loans and bank charges. Financial income, net, in the year ended December 31, 2015 was $442,000, compared to financial expenses, net of $196,000 in the year ended December 31, 2014. The increase in financial income, net in the year ended December 31, 2015 was primarily due to higher income recorded with respect to interest on our marketable securities and higher income related to exchange rate fluctuations.

Income Tax Expense, Net.new had net income tax expenses of $2.8 million in the year ended December 31, 2015 compared to $3.4 million in the year ended December 31, 2014. The decrease in the net income tax expenses is primarily a result of lower utilization of deferred tax assets.

Year Ended December 31, 2014 Compared to Year Ended December 31, 2013

Revenues. Revenues increase 10.5% to $151.6 million in the year ended December 31, 2014 from $137.2 million in the year ended December 31, 2013. The increase in revenues was due to an increase in revenues from our networking product line, as well as an increase in support services related to our networking products.

Our revenues from products in the year ended December 31, 2014 increased by 6.1% to $118.6 million, or approximately 78% of total revenues, from $111.8 million, or 81% of total revenues, in the year ended December 31, 2013. The increase in revenues from products was primarily attributable to the increase in our networking product line, particularly with respect to our Session Boarder Controller product line, as well as due to the growing demand for our networking product line in the Unified Communications market, Contact Centers and Hosted Services markets.

Our revenues from services in the year ended December 31, 2014 increased by 29.6% to $33.0 million, or approximately 22% of total revenues, from $25.5 million, or 19% of total revenues, in the year ended December 31, 2013. The increase in revenues from services was driven by the growth in support services related to the increase in revenues from networking products and by the growth in professional services.

Cost of Revenues and Gross Profit. Cost of revenues includes the cost of hardware, quality assurance, overhead related to manufacturing activity, technology licensing and royalty fees payable to third parties and royalties payables to the Office of the OCS. Gross profit increased to $89.0 million in the year ended December 31, 2014 from $78.7 million in the year ended December 31, 2013. Gross profit as a percentage of revenues was 58.7% in the year ended December 31, 2014, compared to 57.3% in the year ended December 31, 2013.

Cost of revenues from products increased by 4.5% to $54.3 million in the year ended December 31, 2014 from $52.0 million in the year ended December 31, 2013. This increase is primarily attributable to an increase in the procurement of materials, in line with the increase in revenues from products. Gross margin percentage for sales of products increased to 54% in the year ended December 31, 2014 from 53% in the year ended December 31, 2013.

Cost of revenues from services increased by 25.5% to $8.2 million the year ended December 31, 2014 from $6.6 million in the year ended December 31, 2013. This increase is primarily attributable to higher support personnel expenses associated with providing services and implementation of our products with service providers as well as enterprise customers. In the year ended December 31, 2014, the gross margin for sales of services increased to 75% from 74% in the year ended December 31, 2013. In the year ended December 31, 2014, expenses included in cost of revenues related to stock-based compensation were $89,000 compared to $62,000 in the year ended December 31, 2013.

Research and Development Expenses, net. Research and development expenses net, consist primarily of salaries and related costs of employees engaged in ongoing research and development activities, development-related raw materials and the cost of subcontractors, less grants from the OCS. Research and development expenses were $32.3 million in the year ended December 31, 2014 and $28.2 million in the year ended December 31, 2013. As a percentage of total revenues, these expenses were 21.3% in the year ended December 31, 2014 and 20.5% in the year ended December 31, 2013. Research and development expenses increased primarily as a result of adding personnel in connection with our continued development of new products and as a result of the NIS appreciation against the U.S. dollar. In the year ended December 31, 2014, expenses included in research and development expenses related to stock-based compensation were $585,000, compared to $408,000 in the year ended December 31, 2013. Grants recognized from the OCS were $3.9 million in the year ended December 31, 2014, compared to $2.8 million in the year ended December 31, 2013.

Selling and Marketing Expenses. Selling and marketing expenses consist primarily of salaries and related costs of selling and marketing personnel, as well as exhibition, travel and related expenses. Selling and marketing expenses increased 15.9% in the year ended December 31, 2014 to $45.5 million from $39.3 million in the year ended December 31, 2013 and increased as a percentage of total revenues to 30.0% in the year ended December 31, 2014 from 28.6% in the year ended December 31, 2013.

These expenses increased on an absolute basis as a result of an increase in our sales force and marketing activities. In the year ended December 31, 2014, expenses included in selling and marketing expenses related to stock-based compensation were $1,105,000 compared to $625,000 in the year ended December 31, 2013.

General and Administrative Expenses. General and administrative expenses consist primarily of salaries and related costs of finance, human resources and general management personnel, rent, network and allowance for doubtful accounts, as well as insurance and consultant services expenses. General and administrative expenses decreased 9.2% to $7.7 million in the year ended December 31, 2014 from $8.5 million in the year ended December 31, 2013. As a percentage of revenues, general and administrative expenses decreased to 5.1% in the year ended December 31, 2014 from 6.2% in the year ended December 31, 2013. In the year ended December 31, 2014, expenses included in general and administrative expenses related to stock-based compensation were $767,000, compared to $606,000 in the year ended December 31, 2013.

Financial Income (Expenses), Net. Financial income, net consists primarily of interest earned on cash and cash equivalents, marketable securities and bank deposits, net of interest accrued on our bank loans as well as on our remaining senior convertible notes outstanding, and bank charges. Financial expenses, net, in the year ended December 31, 2014 were $196,000, compared to financial income, net of $96,000 in the year ended December 31, 2013. The increase in financial expenses, net in the year ended December 31, 2014 was due to lower interest income recorded with respect to our bank deposits and due to fluctuations in the NIS/U.S. dollar exchange rate which were partially offset by lower expenses recorded with respect to interest on our bank loans and financial income with respect to our marketable securities.