Amdocs has announced its intention to acquire Bridgewater Systems.
The acquisition adds Bridgewater’s policy management and subscriber data management portfolio to Amdocs’ wide range of charging, billing, and customer management software.
Amdocs said that the acquisition was intended to allow service providers to gain a complete view of the customer – “across multiple devices, lines of business, and networks”.
The driver for operator investment in policy and subscriber data management systems is to be able to tie more value to data services. Operators hope to hook the value they get from mobile data more closely to their operating costs, which means being able to offer services that are network and customer-aware. They also need to support rapid growth in network transactions on their mobile broadband networks. One proposed method of achieving that is to offer network-aware, or QoS-enabled services, and operate more flexibly in charging for those services.
To do that requires a view of a customers’ own priorities and experience, as well as the ability to control and manage service delivery across the network. Policy plays its part in subscriber management, ascribing rights and access, as well as service levels.
Bridgewater’s biggest policy deal is a $56 million contract signed with Verizon in late 2010. The size of that deal was a significant boost to a company that had 2010 revenues of $90 million. It also has Mobily and MetroPCS as customers.
Amdocs is paying $130 million, net of Bridgewater’s cash. Bridgewater’s net earnings before tax in 2010 were $23 million.
Bridgewater also has an existing arrangement with Juniper Networks, where Juniper resells Bridgewater solutions as part of its core network offering.