Huawei looks set to expand its software portfolio, with reports indicating the Chinese-based telecom equipment giant is in the process of acquiring Australia-based Fastwire, which specializes in operating support services.
In a story this week, LightReading reported that the deal has been completed, with plans to announce the acquisition at the upcoming Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, Spain. News on the deal came from a meeting with analysts and reporters in London.
Huawei has steadily been building up its software portfolio in an attempt to better compete with more established equipment vendors like Ericsson, Nokia Solutions and Networks and Alcatel-Lucent. Earlier this week, Huawei and NSN signed a cross-licensing agreement for OSS, following up on a previous plan the two infrastructure giants announced last spring.
Ericsson, which this week beefed up its software portfolio, is also expected to cross license its OSS system with Huawei and NSN, according to a memorandum of understanding signed by all three companies last May. That MoU was centered on the OSS interoperability initiative, which is designed to simplify and reduce integration costs and speed up the time-to-market of new services. The agreement covers “fault, performance, configuration and basic network event and trace management for the northbound interfaces from radio access, circuit core and packet core network management systems.” The venture is also open to third-party OSS vendors, though they have to join the OSSii to participate.
OSS functions include planning and optimizing the network and fulfilling service orders, and are distinct from business support systems functions, which include customer relations management, charging and billing. According to the analysts at Gartner, Huawei and NSN are both still “challengers” in the OSS space, with NSN ahead of Huawei in both completeness of vision and ability to execute. The leaders in the OSS space are Oracle, NetCracker, Amdocs, IBM and Ericsson.
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