Lucent continues data acquisition binge

Since announcing a move into the data networking market last year, Lucent Technologies has followed a simple strategy: Why build when you can buy?

Last week, the company made its fifth data acquisition since September 1997 by acquiring privately held MassMedia Communications. The Natick, Mass., start-up has developed a software package that manages connections across data, voice and video networks. It is already used in Lucent's PacketStar asynchronous transfer mode access products to connect ISDN and ATM networks.

Based on a signaling-independent call model, MassMedia's software provides a platform on which Lucent can quickly add different signaling protocols to call processing.

"It's a call model to do a horizontal positioning between heterogeneous networks," said Andy Patka, president and founder of MassMedia. He joins Lucent Data Networking Systems as director of signaling applications and call control. The basic idea is to put call control protocols directly into the switch fabric, he added.

One analyst gave Lucent's acquisition high marks.

"What they're really trying to do is position themselves to go from the local area network through the carrier cloud," said Maribel Lopez, an analyst with Forrester Research. "The very edge and core of the carrier network is really where they're one of the better-positioned players."