Ericsson is acquiring New Jersey-based CENX, which provides end-to-end service assurance for hybrid networks.
While based in the US, CENX has a significant Canadian presence through its office in Ottawa, which it opened in 2013. Approximately 185 of CENX’s employees will join Ericsson.
Ericsson has held a minority stake in CENX since 2012, and the company said that the acquisition boosts Ericsson’s Operations Support Systems (OSS) portfolio with vendor-agnostic service assurance and closed-loop automation across physical and virtualized networks. With the rising adoption of 5G, Ericsson noted that telecom operators need to leverage network virtualization and orchestrate and automate network slices to serve help enterprise customers pursuing digital transformation.
“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,” said Ed Kennedy, CEO of CENX. “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.”
In August 2015, the company raised a $12.5 million Series D, with BDC and Ottawa-based Mistral Venture Partners among its investors.
“Dynamic orchestration is crucial in 5G-ready virtualized networks,” said Mats Karlsson, head of solution area OSS at Ericsson. “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.”