GENBAND Acquires NextPoint Networks

Deal Brings New SBC, FMC Capabilities and Many Customers

Gateway leader GENBAND is once again expanding its horizons, this time through the acquisition of NextPoint Networks Inc.. The deal, for which the value was not disclosed, brings the quickly growing vendor a slew of new customers, more sophisticated session border controller technology, and security gateways for fixed/mobile convergence applications.

GENBAND will market the NextPoint gear as the S Series of security-based solutions. They will join in GENBAND’s portfolio the G Series of low-, mid- and high-capacity converged gateways and the C Series of gateway controllers. In the future, GENBAND expects to embed the NextPoint session border controller functionality into its G9 gear, said Mehmet Balos, GENBAND’s executive vice president and CMO.

Balos also told xchange that with voice increasingly moving to VoIP, IP-to-IP communications becoming more prevalent, and IMS moving forward, service providers’ needs for solutions like session border controllers and security gateways are growing. He added that part of GENBAND’s mission is to be among the top three in any product category in which it plays. NextPoint fit the bill, given it’s the No. 2 SBC supplier, with 14 percent share, second only to Acme Packet.

NextPoint was also attractive to GENBAND given there is no real product overlap between the companies’ portfolios. NextPoint brings a lot of new customers onboard and both companies have a strong R&D effort.

Although GENBAND has some session border controller capabilities in its existing gear, Balos said the NextPoint SBS solution is much more comprehensive. Core SBC functions in the NextPoint solution include denial of service (DOS) protection, deep packet inspection, access control and theft of service protection. It also provides comprehensive interworking, SLA assurance, regulatory compliance and flexible policy management for real-time sessions.

NextPoint also brings to the table close to 400 additional customers to GENBAND, which as a result will have more than 850 service provider customers in 85 countries, noted Balos, who said “there is literally no overlap” between customers of the two companies. He added that while NextPoint originally was focused on Tier 2 and 3 customers, it recently turned its sites with Tier 1 service providers (GENBAND’s target customer group).

Like GENBAND, he said, NextPoint had been working with large equipment suppliers as distribution partners to reach those Tier 1 carriers. GENBAND has distribution deals with Alcatel-Lucent, Motorola, NEC, Nokia Siemens and Nortel. The company didn’t disclose with which very large vendors NextPoint has distribution deals.

The R&D will continue to be a big focus for NextPoint under the GENBAND ownership, added Balos, noting that 60 percent of GENBAND’s human resources is dedicated to R&D, which is why large companies like Alcatel-Lucent and Nortel have chosen its products.

In addition to those important relationships and the NextPoint deal announced today, GENBAND in the past four calendar years has executed a variety of acquisitions and grown revenues from $5 to $94 million, which it says is attributable to both acquisition and organic growth. GENBAND bought Tekelec’s Switching Solutions Group in April 2007; Nokia Siemens Networks’ Surpass IP trunking gateway product lines in April 2008; and both BayPackets Inc. and the Digital Central Office business of Siemens Networks LLC in late 2006.

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