GoAhead Software is adding some more punch to its offering with the acquisition of the embeddedMIND business of S3. The privately held companies are not releasing financial terms of the deal.
Bellevue, Wash.-based GoAhead plans to maintain embeddedMIND's entire team and facility in Wroclaw, Poland. embeddedMIND's customers include wireless infrastructure providers such as Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Siemens Networks.
Both companies have been focusing on products for equipment makers so that OEMs don't have to build products on their own. Buying commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions from the likes of GoAhead makes sense for equipment providers that are under the gun to provide carrier-grade solutions to network operators as quickly as possible, according to Bill Yaman, vice president of sales and marketing at GoAhead.
In years past, it wasn't unheard of for the development cycle, from platform design to commercial availability, to take 30 to 48 months. But that's no longer acceptable. As service providers respond to consumer demands, they're turning to their equipment vendors for quick solutions. With COTS and pre-integration, that timeframe is more like 14 to 24 months.
GoAhead's software and services support IMS, base station controllers and media gateways, among other things. The in-house teams within infrastructure providers remain its single biggest source of competition.
The companies will continue to provide their respective stand-alone solutions, but the acquisition also means GoAhead can offer a single solution for many system services, Yaman says.