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By Tim Young
This month, Pipeline brings you the first of our new monthly columns dedicated to what's going on in the world of OSS. We've taken a look in the news that has come across the wire in the last month and have taken a stab at separating the wheat from the chaff and bringing you some of the news that impacts the service providers, vendors, and anyone else involved in OSS. Without further ado, let's go to the news.
Subex Azure has been in the news quite a few times recently. Ever since the Bangalore-based Subex merged with the UK's Azure in the middle of 2006, the company has been shaking up its image and product line. The company launched a risk management solution and unveiled an integrated service platform back in November, and rebranded the entire product suite 'Rocware' earlier this month. The company just appointed a new CFO, as well. However, the most recent news is Subex Azure's acquisition of Syndesis. This acquisition, coming at the price of $164 million, will no doubt aid in the continue growth and change of Subex Azure.
Other mergers abound.
AT&T and BellSouth have gotten together. The move consolidates ownership of Cingular Wireless, as well. Naturally this may have interesting implications in the business community, but for the OSS set, does this simply mean fewer potential customers?
Also on the merger front, Cisco has acquired digital signage company Tivella.
- In addition, Ericsson (well, technically Ericsson's indirect wholly-owned subsidiary Maxwell Acquisition Corporation) has made a tender offer to buy up outstanding shares of Redback at 25 bucks a share, USD.
- JDSU has agreed to acquire Casabyte. While financial terms have not been disclosed, the move has value for JDSU, which is the leader in test and measurement solutions for telecommunications service providers, cable operators, and network equipment manufacturers. Casabyte has some excellent experience in end-to-end monitoring for wireless, so the move is natural, and yet another waypost on the path to fixed-wireless convergence.
- Amdocs has picked up yet another valuable
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Pipeline brings you the first of our new monthly columns dedicated to what's going on in the world of OSS. |
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asset, at it was announced that the firm plans to buy SigValue for $54 million in cash. Amdocs already owns 14% of the smaller firm. SigValue's solutions are generally targeted towards emerging markets, and this acquisition helps strengthen Amdocs' position in that sector.
The mainstream media is buzzing about Apple's new iPhone. While, at the moment, the phone is just another cool handset, and not really the type of thing that OSS types can get too crazy about, it does raise implications of ever-increasing mobile applications, and how a strong OSS can help SPs deliver next gen services to ever-glossier handsets.
UTStarcom has had some personnel issues over the last month. The day after it was announced that EVP and CTO Bill Huang would be leaving company for an executive position with China Mobile, it came out that CEO Hong Lu is under scrutiny. Lu received a “Wells Notice” from the US Securities and Exchange Commission on December 18th, 2006, in connection with an ongoing investigation into trading activities by third parties. The notice lets Lu and the rest of UTStarcom know that it intends to recommend to the SEC that a civil injunctive be filed alleging that Lu violated section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Lu does have a chance to respond to the staff before any formal recommendations are made. In the short-term, UTStarcom says that they are sticking by Lu.
It's that time of year. Companies across the board are sending out releases about the
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