Mobile messaging business Acision has been taken over by Comverse in a bid to strengthen the latter’s digital services for operators.
The deal is a mix of $135 million (€120.3 million) in cash, and shares in the new company. It is expected to close by the end of September this year. The new company will be led by executives from both businesses and will be based at Comverse’s home of Massachusetts in the United States.
Comverse said the new company will provide service providers, OTT businesses and enterprises with messaging and digital services. It will offer the likes of data analytics, enterprise application to person messaging, credit orchestration, two factor authentication and M2M communication, in addition to rich communication services, WebRTC and APIs to build services quickly.
Philippe Tartavull, President and Chief Executive Officer, Comverse, said: “Continued consolidation in the Service Provider space creates the need for strong suppliers. Our acquisition of Acision underscores Comverse’s commitment to quickly building scale and market leadership in the fast-growing digital services sector. This acquisition creates a formidable platform for innovation that is expected to serve our customers’ current and evolving needs.
“Acision brings a diverse portfolio of mobile monetisation and rich enterprise messaging solutions complementing Comverse’s market leading digital services platform. The combined portfolio will allow us to enable our service provider and enterprise customers to deliver and monetise a new array of advanced digital services to their customers.”
Jorg Mohaupt, Head of TMT at Access Industries, majority shareholder of Acision, added: “The combination of Acision and Comverse creates a market leader in the high growth digital services segment. We are excited about the potential of this acquisition and the resulting value creation for our shareholders.”