Nokia Dives Deeper Into Software With Plans To Acquire Comptel For $370 Million

Nokia's software strategy is becoming more clear as it revealed on Thursday its intention to acquires telecom software specialist Comptel for $370 million.

"Nokia is committed to building its software business and is backing its commitment with strategic investments," said Bhaskar Gorti, president of Nokia's Applications & Analytics business group, in a statement. "The timing of the Comptel purchase is important as our customers are changing the way they build and operate their networks. They are turning to software to provide more intelligence, automate more of their operations, and realize the efficiency gains that virtualization promises."

Finland-based Nokia said acquiring fellow Finnish company Comptel will add critical solutions for catalogue-driven service orchestration and fulfillment, intelligent data processing, customer engagement, and agile service monetization.

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The planned acquisition is part of Nokia's strategy to build a standalone software business by expanding and strengthening its software portfolio and go-to-market capabilities with additional sales capacity and a strategic partner network, according to a release.

By combining Nokia's Service Assurance portfolio with Comptel's Service Orchestration solution, Nokia said it would enable a closed loop between service assurance and fulfillment that simplifies management of complex heterogeneous networks.

"Together with Nokia we would create an agile and innovative player which can challenge current market leaders head-to-head," said Juhani Hintikka, president and CEO of Comptel, in a statement. "I am 100 percent confident that we are now capable, ready and passionate to take the next step in scaling and expanding our business beyond the ordinary with a new set of resources that Nokia would provide us."

Additionally, integrating Comptel technology into Nokia's Cloudband and Nuage Networks portfolios, Nokia will provide customers with complete, end-to-end orchestration of complex Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software Defined Networking (SDN) deployments.

In November 2016, Nokia announced its long-term strategy, dubbed, "Rebalancing for Growth." As part of the strategy, Nokia is strengthening its software capabilities in key areas around technology innovation, services and go-to-market. The planned acquisition of Comptel would bolster go-to-market efforts with a software-dedicated sales force and strong partner network, said Nokia.

Comptel was founded in 1986 and has over 800 employees in 32 countries. The software company processes 20 percent of world's mobile usage data every day and orchestrates communications and digital services for more than two billion end-users daily, according to a release.