Ericsson agreed to acquire CENX, a privately-held company that offers a hyper-scale service assurance platform across virtual and hybrid networks. Financial terms were not disclosed.
CENX, founded in 2009, is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey. The company achieved significant year-over-year revenue growth in the fiscal year that ended December 31, 2017. CENX employs 185 people. Ericsson has held a minority stake in CENX since 2012.
Ericsson said the acquisition will boost its Operations Support Systems (OSS) portfolio with vendor-agnostic service assurance and closed-loop automation capability, including in NFV and orchestration.
Mats Karlsson, Head of Solution Area OSS, Ericsson, says: “Dynamic orchestration is crucial in 5G-ready virtualized networks. By bringing CENX into Ericsson, we can continue to build upon the strong competitive advantage we have started as partners. I look forward to meeting and welcoming our new colleagues into Ericsson.”
Closed-loop automation ensures Ericsson can offer its service provider customers an orchestration solution that is optimised for 5G use cases like network slicing, taking full advantage of Ericsson’s distributed cloud offering. Ericsson’s global sales and delivery presence – along with its strong R&D – will also create economies of scale in the CENX portfolio and help Ericsson to offer in-house solutions for OSS automation and assurance.
Ed Kennedy CEO, CENX says: “Ericsson has been a great partner – and for us to take the step to fully join Ericsson gives us the best possible worldwide platform to realize CENX’s ultimate goal – autonomous networking for all. Our closed-loop service assurance automation capability complements Ericsson’s existing portfolio very well. We look forward to seeing our joint capability add great value to the transformation of both Ericsson and its customers.”
- CENX was co-founded in 2009 as a Carrier Ethernet Neutral Exchange by Mr. Nan Chen, who is also the founder and president of MEF.
- Previous investors in CENX have included BDC Capital, Mistral Venture Partners, VMware, Highland Capital Partners, Mesirow Financial Private Equity Inc., Verizon Ventures, a subsidiary of Verizon Communications, Ericsson, DCM Ventures, and Cross Creek Advisors.
CENX lands Tier 1 European contract for service assurance
CENX announced a contract to provide its hyper-scale service assurance platform to a globally recognized European Tier 1 operator. CENX’s hyper-scale service assurance platform enables closed-loop assurance automation across virtual and hybrid networks.
Under the contract, CENX will support the launch of new digital services and business models across fixed, wireless and data center infrastructure. CENX will enable the operator to assure and monitor its physical and cloud network assets within a single-pane while enabling closed-loop automation to better manage increasing complexity.
