Friday, February 10, 2017

Nokia to Acquire Comptel, Furthering its Software Portfolio

Nokia agreed to acquire Comptel Corporation, a telecom software company based in Helsinki, Finland, for approximately EUR 347 million in cash.

Comptel offers solutions for catalogue-driven service orchestration and fulfillment, intelligent data processing, customer engagement, and agile service monetization. It processes 20 percent of world's mobile usage data every day, orchestrates communications and digital services for more than two billion end-users daily and its largest customer has around 300 million subscribers. In 2015, Comptel's revenue was EUR 98 million with an 8.7 percent operating margin.  The company was founded in 1986 and has approximately 800 employees. Outside of Finland its major sites include Bulgaria, Malaysia, India, the United Kingdom and Norway.

Nokia said the deal will advance its software strategy and provide service providers with a comprehensive solution to design, deliver, orchestrate and assure communications and digital services across physical, virtual and hybrid networks. Nokia's ambition is to build a standalone software business at scale by expanding and strengthening its software portfolio and go-to-market capabilities with additional sales capacity and a strategic partner network.

The combination of Nokia's Service Assurance portfolio and Comptel's Service Orchestration portfolio would enable a dynamic closed loop between service assurance and fulfillment that simplifies management of complex heterogeneous networks. When combined with Nokia's Cloudband(TM) and Nuage(TM) portfolios, Nokia would be able to provide customers with complete, end-to-end orchestration of complex Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software Defined Networking (SDN) deployments.

"Nokia is committed to building its software business and is backing its commitment with strategic investments. The timing of the Comptel purchase is important as our customers are changing the way they build and operate their networks.  They are turning to software to provide more intelligence, automate more of their operations, and realize the efficiency gains that virtualization promises. We want to help them by offering one of the industry's broadest and most advanced portfolios. Comptel helps us do that," stated Bhaskar Gorti, president of Nokia's Applications & Analytics business group.

http://www.nokia.com
http://www.comptel.com/

GlobalFoundries Ramps Up Manufacturing

GLOBALFOUNDRIES announced an expansion of its global manufacturing footprint in response to growing customer demand. The company is expanding its leading-edge fabs in the United States and Germany, expanding its footprint in China with a fab in Chengdu, and adding capacity for mainstream technologies in Singapore.

In the U.S., GF plans to expand 14nm FinFET capacity by an additional 20 percent at its Fab 8 facility in New York, with the new production capabilities to come online in the beginning of 2018. This expansion builds on the approximately $13 billion invested in the United States over the last eight years. The NY fab will continue to be the company's center of leading-edge technology development for 7nm and extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, with 7nm production planned for Q2 2018.

In Germany, GF plans to build up 22FDX 22nm FD-SOI capacity at is Fab 1 facility in Dresden to meet demand for the Internet of Things (IoT), smartphone processors, automotive electronics, and other battery-powered wirelessly connected applications, growing the overall fab capacity by 40 percent by 2020. Dresden will continue to be the center for FDX technology development. GF engineers in Dresden are already developing the company's next-generation 12FDX technology, with customer product tape-outs expected to begin in the middle of 2018.

In China, GF and the Chengdu municipality have formed a partnership to build a fab in Chengdu. The partners plan to establish a 300mm fab to support the growth of the Chinese semiconductor market and to meet accelerating global customer demand for 22FDX. The fab will begin production of mainstream process technologies in 2018 and then focus on manufacturing GF's commercially available 22FDX process technology, with volume production expected to start in 2019.

In Singapore, GF will increase 40nm capacity at its 300mm fab by 35 percent, while also enabling more 180nm production on its 200mm manufacturing lines. The company will also add new capabilities to produce its industry-leading RF-SOI technology.

http://www.globalfoundries.com/