Induslogic to acquire Lambent

Induslogic, a company that has been growing rapidly in the relatively new segment of outsourced product development, is planning to announce this week that it has signed an agreement to acquire Lambent, a company based in Nagpur, India, that provides product engineering services for the mobile industry.

The acquisition will add to Induslogic's established Mobile Center of Excellence, extending the company's capabilities not only to develop new mobile products for service providers and product vendors requiring off-shore help, but also to partner with other mobile technology firms, according to Induslogic. Washington, D.C-based Induslogic already has a global services campus on the outskirts of New Delhi, India.

Six-year-old Lambent develops and tests wireless gaming and location-based services with companies such as Electronic Arts, iFone, Konami and Sony Digital and was an early adopter of Qualcomm's BREW platform.

Outsourced, off-shore product development, also referred to as distributed agile product engineering, stretches the previous understanding of what kind of work is being outsourced and how. IT outsourcing, call center outsourcing and other business process outsourcing has been common for some time, but product development is another area that can benefit from it, said Tony Surak, vice president of worldwide sales at Induslogic.

“Product development is a very costly and complex activity requiring a huge knowledge base,” he said. “Especially in the mobile industry, where you've got all these different phones that you have to port applications to. Off-shoring for product development reduces the cost, improves the time-to-market and provides assistance from an experienced knowledge base.”

“The market for mobile product engineering is red hot and without any clear leader,” added Vas Bhandarkar, an Induslogic board member, who's also a venture partner with Blue Run Ventures (formerly Nokia ventures), and former chairman of gaming platform firm Unimobile. “Induslogic's hardcore experience building mobile products for the leaders in the mobile software industry combined with Lambent's tremendous strength in testing and porting such products is a dynamite combination.”

Induslogic CEO Peter Harrison added that Lambent's expertise in BREW and J2ME will accelerate mobile product development, test and porting for his company's existing partners. Induslogic already has partnerships with several companies, including Gemalto, Mobile365, Par3, Polaris Wireless, SMS.ac and Telecommunication Systems Inc. In addition to mobile solutions, Induslogic partners with emerging software companies within the financial services, telecom, payment and consumer Internet markets.