LightRiver Software, a unit of LightRiver Technologies, has acquired multivendor transport network systems software provider Unique Computer Services, enabling it to help customers automate their optical networks.
What Unique brings to the table is its netFLEX product, which enables transport network service providers to provision and manage anything from a few to several hundred thousand network elements, with Fault, Configuration, Accounting, Performance, Security (FCAPS) support across a broad range of legacy and next-gen vendors and devices.
By combining the netFLEX product LightRiver’s Transport Lab, Network Factory, preferred access to equipment vendors, and ongoing investment in Tier 1 SDN integration, LightRiver said it can expedite the benefits operators can gain from next generation transport technologies and network orchestration, with Webscale 2.0 elasticity.
Mike Jonas, president of global customer operations for Light River, told FierceTelecom that the acquisition of Unique gives its customers more choices.
“The best multi-vendor transport network integrator is now combined with the most widely deployed, multi-vendor transport network manager, giving our customers total freedom to pick the best solution for them, regardless of legacy decision-making,” Jonas said.
Additionally, the combination leverages aggregated resources to provide a single entity for design, delivery and management of software controlled transport networks.
Unique also brings over 25 years of experience delivering multi-vendor, Layer 0 through layer 2 transport network management and provisioning software solutions to Tier 1 carriers that are delivered through Tier 1 vendors. The company currently manages thousands of nodes.
LightRiver can more effectively align its network integration expertise with Unique’s software capabilities for its optical customers
Jonas noted that dozens of transport vendors have been integrated, including hundreds of discrete device types, within a culture that understands and responds to Tier 1 expectations.
“LightRiver has successfully designed and deployed most of these vendors and devices in customer networks, but in the cloud service provider, Tier 2 and the utility space,” Jonas said. “We feel that the closer marriage of multi-vendor hardware integration custom to the client need, with a philosophically aligned multi-vendor software solution, will provide us a platform to deliver even better networks, faster, as a global integrator to every operator that is deadly serious about their performance.”
The acquisition also bolsters LightRiver’s optical transport SDN vision that it says is mainly dedicated to the transport portion of their customers’ networks.
“Unlike many others, LightRiver is focused squarely on the transport domain for carrier grade network operators in future automation efforts, which is in keeping with our overall brand and historical focus,” Jonas said. “Our ability, through this acquisition, to link legacy networks to next generation SDN products from the vendor community, or tie multiple transport vendors together today, will expedite instantiation of new SDN orchestration and controller solutions.”
Jonas added that the acquisition should also help drive “the adoption of next generation hardware solutions as they will be more easily integrated into that vendor neutral, hardware/software ecosystem.”
Overall, LightRiver’s acquisition of Unique reflects the growing trend of traditional hardware vendors and integrators building out more SDN capabilities or acquiring other companies to bolster their holdings to respond to customers’ desire to virtualize more of their network functions