AMS acquires assets of defunct Quintessent Communications

Fairfax, VA-based American Management Systems, a business and IT consulting firm, announced this week that it acquired the assets of interconnection gateway provider Quintessent Communications in November and will continue supporting the company's software and customers.

Quintessent ceased doing business as a corporate entity last July, but its software, which was a critical component in the electronic flow of service orders between many competitive and incumbent carriers, remained in place supported by a variety of players.

AMS’s communications, media and entertainmnet (CME) division has already upgraded the software to support the latest version of the local service and ordering guidelines (LSOG) issued by ATIS's Ordering and Billing Forum and has signed up four Quintessent customers.

Quintessent was an early leader in the interconnection space along with companies such as DSET, Eftia, Mantiss, Nightfire, Telcordia Technologies and Wisor, many of which have either joined Quintessent in failure, been acquired or changed their business model.

Although the business model appears to be a tough one, AMS believes the Quintessent solution compliments its approach to the telecom space. “There is still a need to come up with improvements and efficiencies between trading partners and Quintessent was a leader in enabling that,” said Vernon Irvin, CME executive vice president.

As a global IT consulting firm, AMS expects to extend the acquired software beyond the telecom space. “The opportunity is not just with CLECs,” Irvin said. “Enterprise companies are also looking for ways to be more efficient with their telco orders. And we have a significant federal, state and local business that needs to standardize their ordering as well.”

Irvin said AMS was approached by service providers who were using Quintessent gateways for access service requests, local service requests, PIC/CARE and E-911, and were looking for someone to manage the software. Some users gained access to Quintessent’s source code and were managing the software themselves. Others were relying on former Quintessent employees for support. “They didn’t want to keep doing the development it required,” Irvin said.

There may be more ahead in the way of acquisition for AMS as it moves to what it calls a more hybrid approach to the OSS space. “This isn’t just a one-time shot,” Irvin said. “The strategy is to continue to acquire partners to make sure we have a suite of capabilities, from billing and customer care to service management, churn management and credit and collections.”