Radisys prepares to capitalize on Reliance acquisition

Reliance Industries’ planned acquisition of Radisys will help the Hillsboro, Ore.-based company accomplish its vision of facilitating more openness in telecom in general and lead to better relationships with major operators around the world.

That’s one takeaway from Radisys CFO Jon Wilson, who said he thinks the deal ultimately will provide a great outcome for Radisys. From management’s perspective, “it will really help us more formally realize our vision over time,” he told FierceWirelessTech, noting the backing of Reliance will make it better positioned to provide the disruption for operators at which it's been aiming.

That vision includes working more intimately with operators and becoming a systems integrator of open-source-centric solutions. The company has done a number of things over the last couple of years to put itself in a position to disrupt. Most recently, it took steps to open source pieces of its own IPR.

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Reliance Industries is the parent of Reliance Jio, which dubs itself the most popular wireless broadband service provider in India. Its subscriber base increased from 160.1 million as of December 2017 to 186.6 million as of the end of March 2018.

Radisys has been trying to go more direct to carriers with its solutions rather than through its traditional telecom equipment manufacturer partners. Given that the management teams of Reliance Industries and Jio have contacts at many of the largest operators around the world, that should spell opportunity for Radisys to raise its profile, according to Wilson.

Natasha Tamaskar, vice president of global marketing and sales strategy at Radisys, agreed, pointing out that Radisys is a relatively small company, and with the backing of Reliance “the lens that we are looked at is also very different. We’re a lot more credible for larger opportunities and larger integration plays and things of that nature.”

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Reliance is actively involved in a number of open telecom initiatives, as is Radisys. Radisys’ involvement is actually a result of large Tier 1 communities bringing it in, Tamaskar said. “From our perspective, it’s not whether we are in this camp or that camp. We support standards and the solutions that our customers are looking for,” she said.

Radisys was founded in 1987 by former Intel employees with later funding from Tektronix. Its revenue hit a high mark of $376 million in 2008, but was down to $133.7 million last year. It went through a bit of a reset, but over the past three to six months it’s been adding employees and has seen success in bringing on new operators to its customer base.

Radisys has about 600 employees globally, and about 500 of them are based in India, largely in Bangalore, Wilson said.