Amdocs boosts 5G portfolio with Openet acquisition

Amdocs has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Openet, a provider of 5G charging, policy and cloud technologies.

The boards of directors of Openet and Amdocs have approved the transaction for net consideration of about $180m in cash which, subject to the satisfaction of official closing conditions, is expected to be completed before the end of the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020.

Under the deal, the two companies will bring Openet’s open and network-centric technologies to Amdocs’ portfolio of more than 350 service provider customers worldwide, helping them to take advantage of the wave of 5G advancements around cloud, edge compute, IoT (internet of things) and new customer experiences.

Openet is a privately owned company headquartered in Ireland, with offices in the US, Malaysia and Brazil and a global customer base. Its business support systems see use among major telcos in Europe.

In 2016, the then mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) BT Mobile installed an Openet network functions virtualisation (NFV) ready charging platform. It provided immediate visibility of account balances, data use notifications and data allowance management.

In the past two calendar years, Openet has generated revenue of about $70m a year. The impact of the acquisition on Amdocs’ non-GAAP diluted earnings per share is expected to be neutral in the full fiscal years 2020 and 2021.

“We are delighted that the innovative Openet team is joining Amdocs,” said Shuky Sheffer, president and chief executive officer of Amdocs Management. “They bring world-class, cloud-native capabilities, network pedigree, and deep 5G charging, policy and data management expertise. The Openet solutions complement our portfolio and this acquisition is part of our mission to accelerate the industry’s move to the cloud.”

Joe Hogan, founder and CTO of Openet, added: “We have been on a 20-year journey in Openet to build a business of which we can all be proud In recent years, we have built new 5G products which are recognised worldwide for their innovation and modern, open, cloud-native architecture. We all look forward to the combined technology strengths of Openet and Amdocs creating new opportunities for service providers at this exciting time of 5G adoption.”

This is the second strategic investment by Amdocs. In March 2020, it announced a partnership with Veego Software, an Israeli startup that works to deliver artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies to perfect the user experience in connected environments.