NEC Grabs NetCracker

Doug Mohney — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 19:21:38 -0400

NEC is buying NetCracker Technology, an operations support systems (OSS) company based outside of Boston Mass. The reported $300 million deal adds to NEC's portfolio of IMS and UC offerings and is being done with a little more fanfare than last year's purchase of Sphere.

The NetCracker purchase is being called a "strategic acquisition" by NEC in the communications industry, adding OSS software and services to its portfolio of mobile and fixed infrastructure products. NEC sees its communications carrier business as continually expanding and OSS represents a key element to new international growth over the next five years.

NetCracker currently employs approximately 1,000 people worldwide and counts France Telecom, MTS, Sprint, TELUS, and Telstra among its customers. Upon completion of the purchase, NetCracker will operate as an independent business unit lead by its current management team and NEC is committed to retaining both the relationships and strategies that NetCracker has developed.

NEC's announcement of acquiring NetCracker is significantly different than its quiet announcement of Sphere last year for $42 million. Sphere linked IP PBX functionality into SOA and planned to leverage that into UC.

For more
- NEC purchases NetCracker announcement

Related articles:
NXTcomm08: NEC's 'Light IMS'
Will IMS free OSS?

NXTcomm08: NEC's 'Light IMS'

Doug Mohney — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 12:41:12 -0400

NXTcomm08, Las Vegas--NEC Corporation of America has announced its "Light IMS" solution, incorporating Service Convergence Integrated Platform (SCI-P), a carrier-grade converged multimedia and SIP-based network architecture.

Light IMS is designed to enable both residential and enterprise applications. NEC is highlighting two applications using the services: Home Monitoring for the residential market and a hosted UC/Centrex offering. Home monitoring enables end-users to get customized home security updates on an IP-enabled device, so you can find out if anyone is stealing your valuables from your desktop or mobile device.

UC/Centrex provides base PBX functional and VoIP cost savings with additional premium (i.e. billable) features available including social networking, dynamic conferencing, click-to-call, and voice recording. CRM integration of UC/Centrex functionality can be done through a CRM API. NEC also offers a "Web Universal Communications Service" for multi-site document sharing.

Related articles:
Sylantro: UC the Pull for IMS
UC battle begins; Cisco, Microsoft Lead