Acision targets tier-two telcos

Having recently demerged from LogicaCMG, mobile software and services provider, Acision, is looking to broaden its market reach by developing a hosted services business tailored to tier-two telcos.

Self-described as a $US500 million startup, Acision was formed through the $US622.4 million purchase of LogicaCMG Telecoms Products group by a consortium including private equity buyer, Atlantic Bridge Ventures, and industrial holding group, Access Industries.

"We see the separation as a great thing because it gives us the funds and the focus back into product development, innovation and expansion into new markets, instead of LogicaCMG's enterprise services side," Acision vice-president A/NZ, Bill Dekker, said.

To lead the push into the tier-two telco arena, Dekker has imported Dutch sales manager, Paul van den Bogaert, as the company's account director of strategic accounts.

"We're bringing in Paul to grow our hosted services business to tier-twos, to customers such as iiNet and AAPT," Dekker said.

He said Acision wanted to provide smaller players with the same mobile telephony infrastructure that larger telcos have without the expense.

"If there was an operator who didn't want to be known to be part of one of the big providers, and who wanted to look like their own mobile network, then we can provide the platform to create that," he said. "The difference here is that because it's a hosted service, it will be shared amongst them."

Dekker is aiming to grow its hosted services side of the business to contribute 20 per cent of Acision's revenue over the next two years. "It's a challenging market because although it's quite large there just isn't a lot of margin to be made there," he said.

Acision's main revenue driver comes from traditional messaging services such as SMS, MMS, unified messaging, high speed internet proxies, customer intelligence management systems and analytics tools. It counts all the major Australian mobile telephony carriers, such as Telstra, Optus, Hutchison and Vodafone, among its customers.

The company also plans to develop an IP-based infrastructure to allow telecoms to embed advertisements in SMS and information messages displayed on mobile phones.

"Ninety per cent of the population in Australia is already using one of our services in some way, whether it be SMS, MMS, or something else," Dekker said.