Redknee Acquires Orga for €38M; Gets 45 Customers, 500 Employees

Yet another acquisition in the OSS/BSS market - and it's Redknee again acquiring a German competitor (previous one - Dec. '12   "OSS/BSS Consolidation: Redknee to Buy NSN BSS" - here).

Redknee announced it has ".. reached a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Orga Systems for a total cash consideration of €38M. Orga’s technology and expertise will enhance Redknee’s real-time monetization and subscriber management platform for communication service providers and the Internet of Things (IoT). Orga Systems provides monetization solutions to more than 45 customers in the communications [see - here, Life:)], automotive, energy, and railway industries. 

Orga’s highly skilled team of more than 500 employees across Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), the Americas, and Asia Pacific will join Redknee, further broadening its global reach. Orga Systems’ 2014 revenue was approximately €60M, with recurring revenue of greater than 45%. The acquisition will be funded through available cash on hand.

Lucas Skoczkowski [pictured], CEO, Redknee said: “As we move forward with the integration, we will leverage our combined product portfolio to expand and enhance our best-of-suite customer focused solutions. We will continue to focus on delivering innovative software solutions. We expect that this acquisition will be accretive and will advance Redknee’s strategy of being the largest independent provider of choice for real-time monetization and subscriber management software. Moreover, we expect that this will help us accelerate Redknee’s expansion into new vertical markets. I look forward to updating the market on the acquisition over the coming months."

See "Redknee to Acquire Orga Systems" - here.

[Infonetics]: Huawei and Cisco ($89M) are the PCC Market Leaders

 
Maywun Wong announced in Cisco's Service Provider blog that "Last week, we were thrilled to receive the news that Infonetics scored Cisco Policy Suite as a Leader in the Policy Management Scorecard. 

Cisco was one of only two leaders recognized by Infonetics in this space and was recognized for building “… up its position in the market rapidly after its acquisition of BroadHop [Dec '12; here], demonstrating strong momentum around policy virtualization”.

See also - 

• Policy Management Market Rises 27 Percent in 2014; VoLTE, Data Monetization Play Big Role" - here 
• [Infonetics]: "significant changes in the policy management vendor landscape" - here.  

See "Cisco Scores as Leader in the Infonetics Policy Management Scorecard" - here.

PCC Deployments [347]: Afghan Wireless Deploys RedKnee

Redknee Solutions announced that it is "supporting Afghan Wireless Communication Company (AWCC), the leading telecom operator in Afghanistan to differentiate its services and provide an advanced customer experience for its subscribers. 

Utilizing the Redknee Unified charging and policy solution, AWCC is leveraging convergent services, to monetize their next generation data strategy and support future growth.

With Redknee’s real-time solution, AWCC is able to provide a greater range of value-add and personalized services faster to the market. AWCC can deliver targeted incentives and rewards to subscribers to increase ARPU and customer loyalty. Redknee’s integrated charging and policy solution has enabled AWCC to optimize its network investments, reduce the load on its network and set differentiated quality of service for individual subscribers. In addition, Redknee’s integrated solution enables AWCC to generate revenue through new business models and partnerships with OTT providers".

See "Afghan Wireless Expands Growth Strategy with Redknee’s Charging and Policy Solution" - here.

PCC Deployments [325]: Oi [Brazil] Trialed Renkee Virtualized Solution During 2014 FIFA World Cup

Redknee Solutions announced that Oi has "..successfully trialed Redknee’s suite of virtualized billing, charging and policy management solutions to drive roaming subscriptions and to ensure high quality wireless connectivity for those attending one of the largest sporting events in the world, the 2014 FIFA World Cup. With Redknee’s highly flexible and scalable solution, Oi was able to better monetize its Wi-Fi investment and enhance the customer experience. 

Redknee’s Wi-Fi Monetization and Offload solution enabled Oi to reduce time to market to launch new services, improve the user experience, and extend revenue streams into new business lines, such as Wi-Fi connectivity at major sporting events. 

[Related post: "Oi [Brazil] Uses Aptilo to Create a Public Wi-Fi over Home/SMB Routers" - here]

Redknee’s partnership with Oi emphasizes the confidence leading communications service providers (CSPs) have in Redknee’s ability to support their monetization strategies. With an aggressive timescale, Redknee’s solution was implemented in less than five weeks". 

See "Redknee Enables Oi to Successfully Leverage Virtualization" - here.

Happy September for Redknee: 2 Weeks, 3 Deals, $20M

In just two weeks, Redknee [see "[Vendor Review]: Redknee Policy Management Strategy" - here] announced 4 multi-million deals:

• [Sep. 17] "a leading communications service provider (CSP) in the Americas region, has signed orders worth more than $8 million dollars. These new service agreements will enable the CSP to launch innovative data services and increase its competitive position in the market. Redknee supports more than 200 communications service providers and Tier 1 operators across the world to monetize digital services and increase profitability"
  
  Redknee Signs $8 Million Dollars of Orders with Operator in the Americas - here

• [Sep. 9] ".. has received $6 million in orders for software and services from a leading global group mobile network operator. The orders will support the operator to launch innovative data services and advanced customer care capabilities to enhance the experience of its customers"
  
  Redknee Receives $6 Million Orders from Leading Global Group Mobile Operator - here

• [Sep. 3] ".. a Tier 1 communications service provider (CSP) in Asia Pacific has placed an additional software expansion order, worth $6 million dollars, to support the growth in subscribers and data usage on its 4G/LTE network. The first expansion order for $9 million dollars was announced on June 12, 2014. This software expansion highlights Redknee’s capability to support the growth strategies of Tier 1 CSPs to advance the customer experience, generate new revenue streams and launch innovative data services faster to market"
  
  Redknee Signs $6 Million Dollar Order with Tier 1 APAC Operator - here

[Anaylsys Mason]: Ericsson and Amdocs Led the Telecom Software Market in 2013

A recent report by Glen Ragoonann and Justin Van Der Lande, Principle Analysts, Dean Ramsay, Analyst, and Mark H. Mortensen [pictured], Practice Head, BSS, Analysys Mason finds that "The value of the worldwide telecoms software market grew by 7.0% (or USD1.6 billion) between 2012 and 2013, from USD23.1 billion to USD24.8 billion. The overall market is still highly fragmented: the top-six suppliers accounted for just 48.6% of the market, and no supplier had a share of more than 12.0%."

• Ericsson increased its leading market share position in 2013 as it continued to integrate the ConceptWave Software and Telcordia Technologies product lines into its OSS/BSS solution sets and expand its contracts with Tier 1 and 2 communications service provider (CSP) customer
   
• Amdocs’ revenue growth was slightly below the market average and the rates achieved by the other top four vendors. However, it remained strong in revenue management and service fulfilment, and maintained its second-place position in the overall telecoms software market.
   
• Strong growth in the network management system (NMS) and SDP segments has increased Huawei Technologies’ market share to 9.6%.
    
• Oracle continued to increase its share, driven by the integration of its service fulfilment and BSS (notably Siebel CRM) products, and to capitalise on its strong brand in emerging markets. Oracle’s revenue is growing at a higher rate than any of the other top-six vendors.
   
• Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN) both lost market share following another challenging year of flat revenue in a growing market. NSN’s loss is largely the result of the sale of its BSS unit to Redknee.

See "Telecoms software: worldwide market shares 2013" - here. 

$17M PCC Deal for RedKnee w/EMEA Group

Redknee Solutions announced that a ".. leading group operator in EMEA has signed multiple software and services orders totaling more than $17 million with Redknee ..Utilizing Redknee Unified, Redknee’s real-time monetization and subscriber management software solution, the CSP can launch innovative data services and personalized offers and generate new revenue streams". 

Lucas Skoczkowski [pictured], CEO, Redknee said: "We are very pleased to support this group operator in enhancing their competitiveness across multiple countries. This demonstrates the confidence this group operator has in Redknee’s expertise to support the aggressive growth strategies of communications service providers across the world”.

See "Leading EMEA Group Operator Signs $17 Million of Orders with Redknee" - here.

Infonetics Identifies the Leading Policy Management Vendors

A new "Policy Management Scorboard" (based on "direct feedback from service providers, market share data, and publicly available financial data") by Shira Levine [pictured], directing analyst for service enablement and subscriber intelligence, Infonetics Research ranks the 8 largest global vendors of policy management solutions: Alcatel-Lucent, Amdocs, Ericsson, Huawei, Openet, Oracle, Juniper, and Redknee.

"Huawei’s and Ericsson’s strong financials and market share [see "[Infonetics]: Huawei Leads the $1B Policy Management Market" - here] growth, along with solid scores in the service provider feedback categories, propelled them to the top of the list .. However, we believe that Oracle and Amdocs have the potential to provide a real challenge to the leaders if and when they’re able to work through some of their post-acquisition issues, and Alcatel-Lucent will likely move up the list once its financials are sorted out.”.

In Infonetics' 2013 and 2012 reports, Openet led the market (here and here).

See "Huawei and Ericsson top Infonetics policy management scorecard; Oracle and Amdocs in hot pursuit" - here.

Redknee Signed $10M PCC Deal (Middle-East)

Redknee Solutions [see "[Vendor Review]: Redknee Policy Management Strategy" - here] announced that it has ".. signed a multi-year contract worth more than $10 million dollars for Redknee’s integrated charging and policy solution. The significant upgrade of the charging solution and new win for Redknee’s policy management (PCRF) solution, with an acquired customer in EMEA, reflects the positive momentum that Redknee is experiencing with its combined customer base".

Lucas Skoczkowski [pictured], CEO, Redknee said: “We are very excited about this significant software product upgrade contract from an acquired customer in the Middle East. I feel it is a testament to the positive feedback Redknee has received throughout the year from our customers. In addition, it validates the successful integration of the acquisition, the investments we continue to make in the combined product portfolio, and our focus on our long-term growth strategy. We are very excited by the opportunity afforded to us by our existing customers and partners as we look to continue to execute on our growth plan”.

See "Redknee Signs $10 Million Charging Upgrade and New Policy Management Solution Contract" - here.

[Vendor Review]: Redknee Policy Management Strategy

   

I spoke recently with Dr Christian Gayda [pictured], Director of Policy Management Solutions, Redknee Solutions to learn more about Redknee's policy management product line (the PCS-5000 product which was acquired from NSN on December 2012 - here; see also the updated DPI-PCRF table).

  

I learned that Redknee is still working closely with Nokia Solutions and Networks (acronym: NSN!) on policy deployments by MNOs. They have now more than 65 deployments, and according to a recent Infonetics report, Redknee has 4.5% of the PCRF market.
  

Source: Infonetics Research 

Source: Redknee Solutions 

Dr Gayda sees the future of policy management in integration with charging (they both need to work together) and application based tiered services - 30% of operators are going in this direction, he says. VoLTE support is also an important direction - with 2 deployments for Redknee so far (see announcement below).

As far as integration with DPI is concerned - in most cases Redknee are in their comfort zone - integrating with NSN products (Flexi_NG - see "NSN Adds Intelligence and Optimization to the Flexi NG" - here) - but they also have few joint deployments with Allot, Sandvine and Cisco. 

In related news, Redknee announced that a "Tier 1 APAC operator is launching Redknee’s latest release of its Policy Management solution.. Redknee’s Policy Management solution will support the APAC operator’s launch of Voice over LTE (VoLTE) services with innovative data plans and offerings and delivering an advanced customer experience ..  Deploying the latest release of Redknee’s Policy Charging and Rating Function solution (PCRF), PCS-5000, the operator will benefit from the significant enhancements in operational flexibility, superior performance and support of multi-service network environments and services, such as VoLTE".

See "Tier 1 APAC Operator Deploys Redknee’s Policy Management Solution for VoLTE" - here.

PCC/DPI Deployments [218]:Bakrie Telecom [Indonesia] Uses Cisco, Huawei and BroadHop

     
One more from BroadHop .. this time BroadHop claims it displaced a current vendor, and the PCEF comes from "multiple vendors" - Cisco ASR5000 and Huawei SIG are shown (see "Huawei's SIG: Policy Enforcement and URL Filtering" - here). The figure also shows RedKnee as part of the BSS/OSS array.

At the end of Q3, 2012 Bakrie Telecom had 11.98M subscribers, a 17% decrease compared to Q3, 2011. Earlier this year, Bakrie's GM of Network Optimization said that "Traffic management is extremely important in the current broadband network and it has to run on a daily basis. Throttling is one of the mechanisms used for managing the data hoggers in the network. However they have to be “politically” managed as well. These hoggers are very active on all the technology blogs and would be able to ruin your reputation. A better policy control function would help you to prioritise and identify the users to be throttled in the network. See more - here

OSS/BSS Consolidation: Redknee to Buy NSN BSS

  

Nokia Siemens Networks announced that Redknee has reached " a definitive agreement to acquire Nokia Siemens Networks’ Business Support Systems (BSS) business. Nokia Siemens Networks’ BSS business provides real-time charging, rating, policy, and customer care solutions to more than 130 communication service providers, including half of the top 100 global mobile operators .. Approximately 1200 employees would transfer to Redknee, underpinning current service levels and quality for customers .. The acquisition is anticipated to close in the first half of calendar year 2013".

In the last months Redknee announced it has secured $20M credit facility (here) and C$17.5M bought deal financing (here).

"Redknee expects to finance the transaction through a combination of cash on its balance sheet and debt facilities. Such debt facilities are subject to conditions and will be entered into on, and subject to, closing of the acquisition. The total consideration paid by Redknee for the BSS business will include 15 million euros in cash at closing, plus a maximum of 25 million euros for certain performance-based cash earn-outs expected to be paid over 12 to 36 months post-closing" 

See "Redknee plans to acquire Business Support Systems from Nokia Siemens Networks" - here.

Operators Views on Tiered Pricing

      

Mobile Europe held a round table on tiered pricing during the recent MWC event hosting Tanya Field, Telefonica UK (also in "Telefonica: "Pricing for Optimized Service should be based on QoS" - here), I- wireless (US MVNO), Mark Newman, Chief Research Officer, Informa and Lucas Skoczkowski, CEO of Redknee that hosted the event. Once more, it seems that the trend is into more sophisticated pricing than the simple volume tiers. According to the participants customers like the new ideas!

See "Tiered Pricing Roundtable with Redknee" - here and video below.

Redknee Upgrades a Tier1 Profile Management System for OTT Monetization

   

Redknee announced "a multi-million dollar upgrade of Unified Profile Server (UPS) by a Tier 1 North American operator. The upgrade will enable the Tier 1 operator to optimize 3rd party content in order to personalize value-added services and generate new revenue streams such as mobile advertising"

See "Redknee Secures Multimillion Dollar Upgrade With Tier One North American Operator" - here.

"Unified Profile Server provides Tier 1 operators with a robust subscriber privacy, policy and personalization framework that stores, manages and provides controlled access to user Value Added Services (VAS) profile data. This enables Tier 1 operators to maximize new revenue streams generated from Over-the-Top mobile services and smartphone applications, such as games, social networking and enterprise applications, and manage user privacy and policies, while reducing existing operational costs"
 

[Update 27 - Sandvine Announces 4 PCRF Partners] PCRF - DPI Compatibility Matrix

Sandvine announced that "it has completed interoperability testing of its Policy Traffic Switch (PTS) with Alcatel Lucent, Intracom Holdings, Redknee, and Tekelec's Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF) platforms. In January, Sandvine and Openet demonstrated operability via a joint customer win. Earlier this quarter, Sandvine had announced interoperability with Bridgewater Systems' PCRF".

See "Sandvine Announces Interoperability With Four Partners" - here.

My last PCRF-DPI compatibility table already has an indication for interoperability between Sandvine and Redknee and Tekelec - and I am adding ALU now. Intracom is not yet on my table.

"Sandvine's network policy control solutions include:

• Scalable quota management based on subscriber entitlements using optimized rules-based Gx interface between Policy and Charging Enforcement Function (PCEF) and PCRF network elements
• Fair usage policies that allocate network resources among subscribers using flexible real-time policy control and advise subscribers of actual usage as policy thresholds are exceeded
• Enforcement of parental controls for limiting children's Internet usage based on time-of-day, application, and duration
• Unified policies to support subscriber mobility across converged fixed/mobile access networks. "

PCRF Vendor	PCRF Product	Allot	Arbor	Cisco	Procera	Sandvine
Alcatel-Lucent	5780 Dynamic Services Controller (DSC)					●
Alepo	3GPP Policy and Charging Rules Function
Aptilo Networks	4G service management platform
Aradial Technologies	Aradial Mobile/APC	●		●
BandWD	BwDRC - Dynamic Resource Control	●		●		●
Bridgewater Systems	Policy Controller/PCRF	●	●	●		●
Broadhop	Quantum Policy Server	●	●	●	●
Comability	ComAbility neXus			●
Comptel	Comptel Policy Control™			●	●
Cisco (Starent)	Policy and Charging Control
Digital Route	MediationZone Policy Control
EliteCore – NetVertex	Netvertex (PCRF)
Ericsson	Service-Aware Policy Controller (SAPC)
Flash Networks	POLICY MANAGER
FTS	Leap™ Policy Control	●		●		●
HP	HP Subscriber, Network and Application Policy	●
Huawei	Open Control & Charging Gateway	●
Kabira (Tibco software)	Policy Server			●
Mobixell (724)	X-treme  Framework Platform (XF)	●		●
Nokia Siemens Networks	PCS 5000	●		●		●
Openet	FusionWorks™ Policy Manager			●		●
Orga Systems	Next Generation Control Point
Redknee	Policy Manager (PCRF)			●		●
Roox	Smart Traffic Management
Tango Telecom	iAX™ Data
Tekelec (Camiant)	Multimedia Policy Engine	●	●	●	●	●
Telcordia	Telcordia Bandwidth Manager
Volubill	CONTROL-IT Policy Manager
ZTE	ZXUN RCP	●