Amdocs is buying policy control specialist Bridgewater Systems for $215 million in a move that Amdocs said will enable service providers to support virtually any pricing strategy for data services.
While Amdocs plays in a number of facets of customer-facing functions such as OSS and billing, it lacked policy control, which is quickly becoming a must-have in mobile data networks as operators are inundated with mobile data traffic and look for new ways to monetize data services.
The acquisition would allow Amdocs to support a wide variety of data use cases, the companies said. For example, a family could share a single, consolidated plan across an iPhone on a 3G network, an iPad on a 4G network and home broadband connection, and all at preferred bandwidth speeds.
In addition to product and solution synergies, Amdocs and Bridgewater said they share numerous top tier customers, including Bell Mobility, Sprint (NYSE:S) and Telstra.
Amdocs' move may very well become a trend, making companies such as Sandvine and Redknee attractive acquisition targets.
"Bellweathers like Amdocs, Cisco and IBM are sitting on tons of cash and for them to buy niche solutions providers like Bridgewater makes absolute sense," analyst Sameet Kanade of Northern Securities, told Reuters.
Last year, Tekelec purchased Camiant to expand its business into policy control.
For more:
- see this release
- see this Reuters article
Related articles:
Bridgewater scores $56 million data-management deal with Verizon Wireless
Bridgewater focuses on ways to control WiFi
Bridgewater scores data offloading contract wins