Amdocs to acquire Cramer in bid for OSS market dominance

Stuart Corner
Sunday, 23 July 2006 11:32

IT Industry - Deals

Telecoms billing and customer management systems specialist, Amdocs is to acquire OSS developer Cramer Systems Group for approximately $US375 million in cash.
Amdocs says it will use the acquisition to expand its service management and OSS offerings and expects to become a leader in OSS and "uniquely able to support large-scale OSS transformation projects."

According to Amdocs, the acquisition will make it "the only company to deliver an end-to-end solution spanning OSS and customer-facing business support systems (BSS), such as billing and customer relationship management (CRM)...Service providers will be able to manage and optimise their entire services supply chain - from the demand side (customers) to the supply side (network), including the enabling business processes in between, such as introduction, fulfilment and assurance of services."

Cramer will form a new division in Amdocs, which will be "the centrepiece of Amdocs' OSS strategy and activities," and will "leverage and enhance Amdocs' current assets in BSS and OSS." Cramer's current management will continue to lead the business.

Amdocs CEO, Dov Baharav, said: "we intend to deliver a complete automated service fulfilment solution across all lines of business - for any service, on any network - linking order management at the customer layer with activation at the network layer."

The move follows an announcement March, at the launch of the Cramer6 OSS Suite, of close co-operation between the two companies and an agreement to integrate their respective products. The two companies signed a letter of intent to  extend an existing cooperation "to create a single OSS platform to support the rapid launch of new, next generation services."

They planned to integrate the Cramer6 OSS Suite with the Amdocs ordering and service management product to deliver "the crucial automated link between front-office customer management and back-office network and service management, unifying service ordering, provisioning, activation and assurance across all products and lines of business."

They claimed that, by linking front and back-office systems as well as service assurance and fulfilment processes, service providers would be able to eliminate product and technology silos. "The resulting single automated system fully manages the customer and product lifecycles and helps providers create a superior, intentional customer experience."

Amdocs, which is expanding its product and customer base through the deal, already paid $US275 million to buy digital commerce software firm Qpass in May and bought private Danish firm Stibo Graphic Software for an undisclosed fee in April.

• Amdocs reported revenue of $US626.4 million for the quarter ended June 30, 2006,, an increase of 23.5 percent from last year's third quarter. Excluding acquisition-related costs, and the write-off of in-process research and development and excluding equity-based compensation expense, net of related tax effects, of $20.6 million, net income was $US106.2 million,