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Backoffice & OSS
GENBAND Continues Transformation by Acquiring BayPackets
Acquisition Expands Company’s Geographic and Customer Base
by Jim Barthold
GENBAND has taken another step onto the Fixed-Mobile
Convergence (FMC) playing field by acquiring BayPackets and
its IP-based multimedia technology platform. The move is
seen as another step in a transformation the company has
been making since changing its name from General
Bandwidth last year.
“I think it’s assisting GENBAND in its transformation, which
started about a year ago, from single product gateway vendor
into more of a multi-product vendor with an actual solution,”
said Joe McGarvey, Senior Analyst, Carrier Infrastructure, at
Current Analysis.
GENBAND in March acquired softswitch vendor Syndeo to open
its product portfolio into the greater network space.
“This is our second [acquisition] in nine months [and] you will
see others, probably, as we continue to look out to see how
we can add value by bringing in additional companies that
probably aren’t going to stand on their own,” said Frederick
Reynolds, Director of Marketing at GENBAND.
BayPackets, in addition to bringing a 60-person workforce and
research and development capabilities in India, also has
technologies that are expected to help GENBAND crack the
emerging IMS space with its base of cable, wireline and
wireless broadband customers, said Jody Bennett, VP of Corporate Development and Marketing.
“I see a big value of the BayPackets acquisition in some of
the technologies we’re developing around fixed and mobile
convergence from an MVNO perspective,” Bennett said. “There
are literally billions of dollars being spent today on some of
the solutions that this platform can deliver, so it’s not only in
the IMS realm but a lot of pre-IMS solutions that we can do
today.”
IMS is flashy but it’s not really the most important element of
the acquisition, said McGarvey, who noted that IMS is
becoming a catch-all phrase within the industry.
“It [the acquisition] fits under IMS just like about anything fits
under IMS [and] BayPackets has done some stuff in that
regard,” McGarvey said. “It gives them (GENBAND) a nice
starting point towards IMS.”
More importantly, though, the acquisition gets GENBAND into
new geographies and “gives them a few partnerships which
improve their distribution,” he continued.
These factors help GENBAND beef up and expand a product
base that is heavily reliant on a relationship with Alcatel and
its concurrent deal with Verizon to deliver GPON technology.
“They’re delivering derived Class 5 services from circuit
switches and that’s a good business right now, but they
recognize that‘s probably going to have some limited window
so they’re going to need something else,” McGarvey said.
Bennett, of course, was a little more upbeat about GENBAND’s
current customer structure.
“We have over 100 customers all the way down to really small
IOCs to large carriers. We are the voice gateway for Alcatel’s
GPON [solution]. We’ve now wedged our way into three RBOCs [and] we
have some pretty good cable companies,” Bennett said.
He agreed that BayPackets brings more to the party than IMS.
“We didn’t want to just get the technology. What BayPackets
brought to the table was a field-proven, highly scalable
platform,” Bennett said. “We got the customers and the field-
proven product.”
It was, as so many companies are concluding today, the best
way to expand the company’s product lines and focus,
especially as service providers look for bigger vendors to
handle more parts of the network infrastructure.
“If we went out and built this on our own we probably would
have missed the market window and spent probably another
$50 million and not have the proven customers or the
channels,” he said.
The deal is an opportunity to “give [GENBAND] the bulk and
breadth to survive over the next few years,” said McGarvey.
For BayPackets, it was a logical move in an era of customer
and vendor consolidation.
“There are a lot of companies in that same classification as
BayPackets, getting swallowed up,” McGarvey said.
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