NetCracker makes first acquisition with Russian firm

Waltham, Mass.-based inventory and OSS solutions provider, NetCracker Technology, this week announced the acquisition of Firma AVD, a professional services company based in Moscow, Russia.

The acquisition was completed in July, but announced today. It was a cash and stock deal of which terms were not disclosed. Firma AVD was founded in 1997 and like NetCracker is privately held. It has been NetCracker’s primary systems integration partner for Russia and the rest of Eastern Europe.

"We have been working closely together for several years to the point where we have some very exclusive joint customers," said Julie Wingerter, vice president at NetCracker. "Based on that it made sense for us to bring them under the same umbrella."

NetCracker and Firma AVD are currently working on projects in Russia, including Comstar United Telesystems, MTU-Inform and MGTS, the Moscow city telephone network, as well as some in Eastern Europe such as GSM operator Omnitel.

NetCracker, which began as a provider of network design tools in 1993 and expanded into OSS around 1997 with inventory-based solutions and services, now has offices in London and Moscow as well as sales teams in Australia and Canada. It also names Sprint, Covad Communications and Time Warner Telecom as U.S. customers as well as Telus in Australia and Telia Sonera in Sweden.

The company will use its newly acquired professional services talent primarily in Russia and Eastern Europe, but possibly in North America as well.

"In order to make a deal work, you have to have not just the software, but the services team that knows the software inside and out, knows your business inside and out and can take ownership of the deployment," Wingerter said. "We have always had a services team and we have been building that out as customers come aboard."

The self-funded NetCracker now has approximately 300 employees. With inventory as its lead product, NetCracker also supplies its mostly service provider customers with order management and outside plant solutions. It also is profitable, Wingerter said, to the point it is able to make this acquisition--and possibly more.

"This is our first acquisition and a cautious one," Wingerter said. "We know the company very well and they know us well. But I certainly wouldn’t rule out us making similar acquisitions going forward under the right circumstances."