Aepona, a global provider of telecoms software products and services headquartered in Belfast, Northern Ireland, has acquired Valista, a Dublin, Ireland-based provider of payment, settlement and service lifecycle management solutions to mobile and broadband operators worldwide. The acquisition, which comes into effect immediately, creates an independent vendor, operating under the Aepona brand, with a complete solution for the "Network as a Service" (NaaS) business model.
With the NaaS model, mobile and broadband operators treat their network and informational assets as marketable resources that can be made available to third party application developers, upstream service providers and enterprises.The organisations can then enhance their applications, services and business processes with Telco capabilities such as voice, location, messaging, profile, billing and so on.
The new Aepona offers Telcos an end-to-end solution for the NaaS model, including Open APIs towards core network capabilities, 3rd party relationship management, monetization, billing mediation and settlement, and service lifecycle management. Following the acquisition, Aepona's client list is now said to include some of the world's largest mobile and broadband operators in North America, EMEA and Asia.
"For some time now, operators have recognized the need to adopt a more collaborative approach to working with organizations such as Enterprises and web-based service providers", said Al Snyder, CEO of Aepona. "The rise in Over-the-Top services has made them realize that in order to compete effectively, they need to leverage their assets to the fullest extent possible, and this means opening up these assets towards third parties in a secure, controlled and billable manner."
"The move towards openness initially focused on the device side, but over the past year attention has shifted towards the network side", continued Snyder. "Aepona has secured several contracts with Tier 1 operators to implement their Open Network API programs, but until now we have lacked the monetization and settlement capabilities that are required for a true NaaS offering. With the acquisition of Valista, we can now offer Telcos the means to monetize their Open API initiatives, as well as offering third parties a convenient way to bill end-users for their services."
Kevin McGrath, CEO of Valista, commented: "This is a major step forward in the evolution of Valista's business. The combination with Aepona creates significant benefits for the customers of both companies, providing them with a more complete solution from a single, independent entity that has the operational scale to serve our large operator customers at a global level. In addition, the combined company's competitive position will be greatly enhanced in the emerging Telco 2.0/NaaS marketplace, as the only independent vendor capable of delivering a complete solution".