Cramer Systems zeroes in on U.S.

UK-based inventory and provisioning provider Cramer Systems, which has been expanding its North American presence over the last 18 months, scored a Tier 1 carrier contract today with Bell Canada, bringing to six the number of North American contracts overall. Bell Canada announced it has chosen the Cramer4 solution to manage its inventory for emerging services.

Bell Canada will take a phased implementation approach with an unnamed global system integrator partner of Cramer’s. The contract is multi-year and will begin with an initial implementation of 300 users in September and grow to about 1500 users by the middle of next year.

For any independent software company looking to crack the U.S. telecom market, a Tier 1 implementation is practically required. “There is enormous skepticism in the Tier 1 community about scale and functionality because the industry is proliferated by solutions that do hit their ceiling,” said Jerry Crook, CEO at Cramer. “But with Bell Canada, we did more than enough to show we can scale for inventory and provisioning across a Tier 1.”

In addition to Bell Canada, Cramer leveraged its contract for separate services with BT last month to begin a trial of Cramer4 across the company’s entire public access network. Crook said he expects to announce another Tier 1 PTT win within four-to-six weeks.

The Bell Canada contract was enough for Cramer to establish an office in Toronto and grow its North American team to about 24. Crook’s goal is to establish Cramer as a global company and change the balance of its revenue to reflect a stream that is 50% U.S. generated. “There is a long way to go, but it is no doubt attainable based on the last 18 months,” Crook said.

Cramer went live with Monet Mobile Networks in Seattle last month, managing inventory and provisioning for its CDMA2000 1xEV-DO (evolution data only) wireless network. Cramer also announced a deal with O2 in Ireland last week.