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Number of results 18 for Acme

08/03/2010 - Report: VoIP equipment Q4 results led by SBC sales

Although the service provider VoIP equipment market was down 28 percent in 2009, the industry's last quarter was led by the steady sales of session border controllers (SBC) says a new report from Infonetics, Q4 Service Provider VoIP Equipment and Subscribers. Q4 2009 was the third consecutive quarter of stable revenue.

Despite being down for the year, the revenue for the VoIP equipment market did show a comeback being up 2.7 percent over Q3 09. According to the release: "The migration to native IP sped up during the past 12 months due to the acceleration of TDM access line loss, resulting in significant declines in TDM-related equipment, particularly traditional trunk media gateways and softswitches."

The report noted four vendors who stood out for growing revenue in 2009 with Metaswitch pulling in sales from trunk media gateways and softswitches, Acme Packet providing SBCs, Radisys moving media servers, and BroadSoft dealing in voice application servers. The report also highlighted that GENBAND's takeover of Nortel's CVAS unit will spur new changes in the VoIP vendor landscape.

For more:
- read the release

11/02/2010 - AcmePacket launches 3 new SIP solutions

AcmePacket announced today three new solutions to help service providers with simplifying and scaling IMS, Rich Communications Suite and next-generation network service delivery networks.

The Net-Net SIP Multimedia-xpress (SMX) offers a simple single system RCS IMS-equivalent or NGN delivery platform delivering SIP services like basic voice to RCS services like enhanced address book, messaging and content sharing for small roll-outs. Tagging on to that release are the Net-Net 4500 Session-aware Load Balancer and Net-Net SBC Cluster which help scale the Net-Net SMX solution or any other Acme Packet access SBC deployment to 2 million subscribers from a single IP address for SIP signaling. Lastly, the Net-Net Route Manager Central manages routes within Acme Packet's Open Session Routing (OSR) architecture--up to 2 million routes per SBC.

Joe McGarvey, principal analyst, IP Services Infrastructure for Current Analysis, described the new solutions "as fast-track and cost-efficient options for delivering voice, RCS and other SIP-based communication services."

For more details:
- check out the release

23/12/2009 - Top Stories of 2009: SIP trunking and Unified Communications gain momentum

In 2009 it was hard to look through VoIP news and not bump into another announcement about a SIP or Unified Communications (UC) deal. Both items have gained momentum and are becoming the rule in the VoIP world. According to Infonetics, SIP trunking service revenue is expected to have an 89 percent compound annual growth rate from 2008 to 2013! In the same report they predict that hosted UC services would "take off," with worldwide revenue doubling over the next four years. Sounds like smart money is on these two areas of IP communications.

A key indicator of UC's coming dominance was Cisco announcement of a major push to corner the collaboration market with new products, reseller options and licensing packages for its unified communications solutions. Cisco pegged the value of the UC market at a whopping $34 billion! A study in October carried out about Frost & Sullivan--commissioned by Cisco and Verizon--found that collaboration tools like VoIP, instant messaging, and high-definition video meetings resulted in cost savings averaging four times the return on investment for firms using the IP platforms. Frost and Sullivan surveyed 3,662 decision makers in small- and medium-sized business as well as enterprises in various parts of the world, and found that 44 percent had deployed some form of unified communications already. According to an ABI Research report on Unified Communications, uptake is on a 'steeply rising curve.' ABI's report predicted that spending on UC would rise from the lowly sum of $302 million in 2008 to $4.2 billion by 2013. Just recently, Adtran also threw its hat into UC arena.

SIP was also a constant source of potential for the industry with a number of companies launching SIP solutions. Acme Packet and BroadSoft teamed for a SIP trunking offering. They claimed that a SIP trunking offering can raise a company's average revenue per customer and reduce churn by providing value-added services to connectivity offers. Ingate and Dialogic launched a SIP offering as well. Then JAJAH, Microsoft inked a SIP deal. Skype for SIP became a major part of Skype's plan to offer businesses its services. Even Sprint got into the action when it made its SIP trunking generally available to OCS clients. The technology seems to follow the line of upgrades that will help companies save money in these hard economic times.

A report in October continued to show that SIP was indeed catching on finding that many companies have deployed VoIP within their organizations, but they are still using legacy TDM to connect to the PSTN. The report stated that as technology upgrades start up again, SIP trunking will come to replace the legacy TDM technology. By 2010 SIP trunking will be the second most commonly deployed trunking type.

22/12/2009 - Top Stories of 2009: Acquisitions - VoIP on Sale

Despite the economy, the VoIP and UC market had a few big buys. Some were fraught with negotiation, litigation or last minute actors swooping in from nowhere. Here are a few notable deals worth noting in 2009:

Avaya buys Nortel ES - In June, Nortel began selling off its various units and it was only a matter of time before companies began stalking its VoIP assets. Initially, analysts saw Nokia Siemens Networks, Sonus and Avaya as all logical bidders for Nortel's VoIP assets. Although rumors swirled that these would all be potential bidders (Analyst maintains Sonus will bid on Nortel's VoIP business), only Avaya really came out with a bid. Avaya's opening bid for Nortel's Enterprise Solutions Division of $475 million was announced July 20. Some thought more players would step up, but on Siemens Enterprise Solutions seemed to have made any challenging bids. Someone must have been bidding up the price, however, because Avaya eventually bought Nortel ES for $915M. Hopes of ending the auction began to suffer from regulations and protests with Verizon leading the charge to block Avaya's bid. Luckily a Judge rejected Verizon's challenge to Avaya-Nortel ES and Ok'd the deal and the deal cleared a number of governmental hurdles. The deal finally went through just days ago. Read more in "It's official - Avaya now owns Nortel ES."

Google buys Gizmo5 - Early into the year Gizmo5 was doing its mating dance to be acquired. Back in February the company deployed a way to gateway between its service and Skype called OpenSky, which allows SIP calls to be forwarded to Skype addresses through Gizmo5. The funny thing was when they launched the service they put a disclaimer at the bottom of their website: "OpenSky is NOT a service endorsed by Skype/Ebay but they should because it means even more Skype usage." Might as well have said BUY US!! (Read Gizmo5 builds (yet another) bridge to Skype for more on that.) And that almost did happen when Skype's founders and their company Joltid filed a lawsuit against Skype which would take away the essential software to run Skype. Skype thought about buying peer-to-peer VoIP startup Gizmo5 because it had a built-in user base and its software could replace the underlying framework of Skype. When Skype made a deal with their co-founders though, Gizmo5 was left in the wind. Then out of nowhere Google acquires Gizmo5, instead for $30 million. This move sent ripples through the online VoIP community as it meant Google was getting serious about VoIP.

Skype founders buy Skype - First Skype founders wanted to buy back company from eBay. But they didn't have enough capital until they started going to private equity companies in April and even then the bid was too low apparently. At the same time eBay began planning a 2010 IPO for Skype which the founders made moves to block legally. In August, Andreessen Horowitz, Netscape founder Mark Andreessen's investment firm was working with other firms to raise $2 billion to purchase Skype. The move was again blocked by a legal challenge from the co-founders. After blocking certain parties from purchasing Skype in the original deal the Skype founders were able to join the investors and buy back 14% and join the board of the company. The final deal was valued at $2.75 billion and sold a share to an investor group led by Silver Lake Investment group including Joltid Ltd. (the founders of Skype) and affiliates like Canada Pension Plan and Andreessen Horowitz. The deal gave the new investors 70 percent of the company while eBay will retain the remaining 30 percent. Read the final details in "eBay completes sale of Skype."

Acme Packet buys Covergence - Acme Packet announced in April it bought Covergence in a deal valued at roughly $22.8 million. Covergence provided software-based session border controllers for VoIP and UC to large enterprises. Acme Packet CEO Andy Ory said the Covergence acquisition fulfills his company's need for SIP trunking in their border control offerings.

KPN buys iBasis - KPN's takeover of iBasis seems like one of the more hostile purchases this year, although somewhat similar to Skype with all the litigation. Royal KPN N.V. saw the acquisition of its remaining stake in wholesale voice provider iBasis as an expansion opportunity too good to pass up--getting a wholesale provider of international long distance telephony and retail prepaid calling services for mobile operators. The two companies had merged in 2007, but KPN did not own iBasis outright. The offer was rejected with iBasis launching a complaint in the court to halt what it said was a "grossly inadequate" offer. KPN upped the ante to purchase rest of iBasis moving the bid from $1.55 to $2.25 per share. This was rejected again so KPN made a final offer on iBasis of $3 a share. The $3 offer was the sweet spot and KPN is reportedly closing the deal for iBasis.

Cisco buys Tandberg - Cisco Systems was reported to have bought Tandberg, the video conferencing equipment manufacturer, for $3 billion, according in October. The move enabled Cisco to grab some more video technology, which it has moved aggressively to bring in house. No so fast though as Tandberg shareholders drove a hard bargain and rejected the initial offer! Cisco then threatened to drop the Tandberg bid altogether in order to be fiscally prudent. After toying with the idea of walking away from the table, the networking giant raised the offer from $3 billion to $3.4 billion--an offer that Tandberg CEO encouraged shareholders to take. In the eleventh hour, they were able to get 89.1 percent of Tandberg shareholders to agree to their $3.4 billion buyout offer. They needed 90 percent but combined with Cisco's 2 percent share of the company already, they had enough.

More - In June, Jaxtr was bought by SabSe Technologies and Natural Convergence announced it was buying NewStep Networks for its FMC technology. In May Avaya purchased contact center software maker Agile and Voxeo bought IMified for its IM API.

23/10/2009 - Skype leverages AcmePacket's Net-Net SBCs for SIP beta

On Friday, Skype announced that they would be using AcmePacket's Net-Net OS-Enterprise session border controllers for its SIP beta offering. Acme Packet will be the sole SBC partner for Skype's SIP beta program.

By using Acme Packet's OSE SBC offering, Skype will be able to simplify the interoperability and feature compatibility of the Skype for SIP beta offering with enterprise IP-PBX equipment and next-generation unified communications platforms which utilize the SIP standard. "Deploying session border controllers from Acme Packet will help ensure interoperability between Skype for SIP and native SIP or SIP-enabled PBXs from leading hardware manufacturers" said Stefan Oberg, VP and General Manager of Skype for Business in the release.

Skype for SIP has been Skype's attempt to make it easier for small businesses to move into low-cost Skype-based calling. Using SIP means companies can usually use the hardware they already have thus lifting the barriers to entry often involved with launching a new IP communications system--buying various pieces of expensive hardware.

For more:
- read the release

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21/10/2009 - Acme Packet adds new capabilities to Net-Net Session Router

In a play to help service operators offload certain capabilities from their older Class 4 voice switching systems while they make the conversion to IP-based communications, Acme Packet has enabled--on their Net-Net Session Router--IP-based number portability services, trusted calling party name services, geo-redundant access to routing databases, and source-based SIP session routing through the use of the Electronic Number Mapping System (ENUM) protocol.

These new capabilities are aimed to help service providers make the transition from SS7 call routing to SIP-based session routing while still being able to offer their traditional voice services. One of the key features of this offering is the network of databases and services using industry-standard ENUM, SIP and DNS protocols that the Net-Net SR system uses to make routing decisions within the core IP network or to the PSTN and other IP networks.

Read more about the Net-Net SR's new features:
- see the release

30/07/2009 - Acme Packet bucks recession, posts record revenue in Q2

While some areas of the telecom equipment industry are suffering in the difficult economic climate, the session border controller market does not appear to be one of them. Market share leader Acme Packet raised its guidance again for the year and reported record revenue of $32.9 million for the quarter, which was up 6 percent from Q1. The company's GAAP net income fell to $1.7 million, however, down from $2.8 million in the first quarter.

The company raised its full-year revenue outlook to $130 million to $134 million, up from previous guidance of $128 million to $134 million. Acme Packet also showed a strong balance sheet, as it generated $14.7 million in cash from operations during the quarter and ended Q2 with $155 million in cash and cash equivalents.

The company purchased Covergence in April, adding an additional lower cost SBC product in the process. Will Acme Packet whip out the checkbook again in Q3 with the cash store it has?

For more:
- see the press release here

07/07/2009 - Two Euro carriers deploy Acme Packet SBCs for IMS

Acme Packet announced today two European carrier customer wins for IMS deployments, according to news releases. Germany's Telefonica O2 Germany and Telnor Sweden both will deploy Acme Packet Net-Net 4000 series session border controllers at access and interconnect borders for IMS services.

Telefonica said in the release it plans to use the Acme Packet gear for IMS-based residential VoIP services, while Telnor plans to use the Net-Net SBCs for hosted business unified communications on its IMS infrastructure. Seamus Hourihan, vice president of marketing for Acme Packet, said IMS went through a stage where hype, rather than actual deployments, ruled the day, but he said that now IMS has arrived.

"We made IMS announcements four years ago initially, and at first, it suffered from more hype than actual realization, like any new architecture," Hourihan said. "But now Acme Packet is involved in more than 100 IMS projects, and most Tier 1 carriers have some sort of IMS project at some point of development."

While Hourihan acknowledged that the majority of current deployments of IMS are in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, he said interest in Latin America and North America continues to grow as well.

For more:
- see the Telefonica O2 Germany press release here
- see the Telnor Sweden press release here

16/06/2009 - Enterprise SBC revenue to increase 49% annually through 2013

Infonetics Research predicted enterprise session border controller revenue will increase 49 percent annually for the next five years, according to a report the firm released Tuesday on the enterprise SBC market.

The report expected increased adoption of SIP trunking to drive the market growth, which the report said should bode well for leading SBC vendors Cisco and Acme Packet. The report's author also said he expected the SBC market will not suffer the same "economic malaise" in 2009 as other telecom equipment niches.

Avian Securities analyst Catharine Trebnick also changed her rating Tuesday on Acme Packet from neutral to positive, as she expected the SBC market growth to be a boon for Acme Packet's bottom line. Acme Packet recently increased its share in this market with its acquisition of competitor Covergence.

For more:
- see the press release here
- see Trebnick's research note on Acme Packet here

12/05/2009 - Acme Packet and BroadSoft update SIP Trunking offering

BroadSoft and Acme Packet announced new features for their joint SIP trunking solution that they said enable business continuity for large enterprise customers. The solution integrates Acme Packet's Net-Net session border controller and BroadSoft's BroadWorks VoIP application program to deliver Microsoft Hosted Messaging and Collaboration 4.5, video-enabled SIP trunking and FMC.

The companies said the new SIP trunking offering can raise a customer's average revenue per customer and reduce churn by providing value-added services to connectivity offers.

"SIP trunking represents a tremendous opportunity for service providers; however, these services are commoditized if they offer nothing beyond basic PSTN connectivity," Michael Tessler, co-founder and CEO of BroadSoft, said in a statement. "Furthermore, the lack of SIP trunking solutions specifically designed for large enterprises has been a limiting factor in adoption and market growth."

Tessler said the joint solution will provide more revenue-generating services to large enterprises. The companies also said the new enhancements have increased the security on SIP connections and improved the interoperability of their offering.

For more:
- see the press release here

30/04/2009 - Acme Packet buys Covergence Inc. for $23M

Acme Packet announced Thursday it has bought Covergence, Inc. in a deal valued at roughly $22.8 million. Covergence shareholders will receive $22.2 million in Acme Packet common stock and an aggregate payment of $600,000 in cash.

Covergence provides software-based session border controllers for VoIP and UC to large enterprises, a market Acme Packet currently leads.

"SIP trunking - with its compelling return-on-investment and increasing worldwide availability - will drive many enterprises to deploy it to even the smallest of locations," stated Andy Ory, CEO and co-founder of Acme Packet. "With the acquisition of Covergence, Acme Packet accelerates its ability to now satisfy the SIP trunking SBC requirements of enterprise small offices and remote sites."

Covergence's SBC products add additional lower-cost options to Acme Packet's product line, expanding the company's reach into the SMB market. Covergence's core team will now work at Acme Packet's headquarters in Burlington, Mass., with three senior-level Covergence employees in executive roles within the combined company.

For more:
- see the Acme Packet press release here

14/04/2009 - Acme Packet retains SBC crown

Acme Packet continues to hold nearly half the total market for session border controllers (SBC). Infonetics and Current Analysis both credit Acme with dominating the SBC market in 2008.

For the fiscal year 2008, Infonetics showed Acme Packet with 45 percent market share, and said it had 48 percent of the SBC market in Q4 2008, based upon product revenues. By Infonetics' numbers, Acme has more than three times the market share of any other competitor.

In January 2009, Current Analysis gave Acme Packet a five-star rating and noted Synergy Research Group stating that the company held more than a 30 percent market share advantage (51.9 percent of the overall market) over the number two player in the stand-alone SBC market in the first nine months of 2008.

In comparison, GENBAND/NextPoint had around 15 percent market share, Huawei had 15 percent market share, and AudioCodes and Mera each had less than 5 percent.

Next year's numbers will be much more interesting, as Acme moves beyond its traditional telecom roots and starts establishing its foothold into the enterprise space, while GENBAND expands its integration of NextPoint's technology into its hardware.

For more:
- Acme Packet's release on the 2008 SBC crown.

28/03/2009 - VoiceCon 2009: Acme Packet announces low-end SBC for enterprises

On Monday, Acme Packet officially announced its new Net-Net 3800, a "low-end" session border controller (SBC) targeted at small enterprise sites, contact centers and service providers. The new box, designed to handle up to 500 simultaneous VoIP/UC sessions, is 50 percent cheaper than Acme's previous lower-end model.

The new 1U-sized box has a system throughput of 5 Gbps, can handle up to 5,000 TLS sessions, 5,000 IPsec tunnels, and 500,000 route table entries. It has four active GigE interfaces (either fiber or copper), and three separate 10/100 Mbps Ethernet interfaces for management interfaces. Optional in-line, wire-speed hardware accelerators are available for enhanced speed IPsec tunnels and encryption/decryption.

"SIP trunking service providers are being very aggressive and want to sell SIP trunks to all locations of an enterprise," said Acme Packet VP of Marketing and Product Management Seamus Hourihan. "If [IT/network management] buy into that architecture, then you need an SBC at all those locations and need one appropriate for the employee population at that location."

Hourihan said the Net-Net 3800 opened up a new market for Acme. Within the U.S., there are about 5,500 locations that have 1,250 or more employees and Acme has been effective in selling larger SBCs to enterprises that had a centralized network architecture, such as a headquarters campus and/or a data center with a large IP PBX.

The Net-Net 3800 is targeted for use at smaller and distributed locations that have anywhere from 100 to 500 employees, with 11,000 locations falling in that category. "We increase the market by 200 percent," Hourihan said.

Payback on a distributed architecture using SIP trunks is very attractive. Distributed offices can get a SIP trunk and receive flat-rate local and long-distance calling. "These days, Most enterprises are only making investments on things that pay back within 6 months," said Hourihan. "The payback on SIP trunks is two months, three months."

25/03/2009 - Acme Packet loads up with interworking, femtocell news

Working to beat the rush of CTIA and VoiceCon news next week, Acme Packet announced new interworking functions for its Net-Net SBC family and the creation of a femtocell ecosystem with other hardware vendors. However, news about the new enterprise-sized SBC box will have to wait until next week.

Acme's new interworking functions include IPv6 to IPv4 and a trio of SIP to PSTN interworking functions. Interworking for IPv6 and IPv4 networks is a topic that is picking up. The IANA projects that the global IPv4 address pool will be exhausted by 2011 with all those new mobile broadband devices sucking up IP addresses, along with machine-to-machine (M2M) communication (think IBM Smart Grid commercials) and continued Internet growth in Asia. IPv6 and IPv4 networks will need to coexist for an "extended" period of time, says Acme, so SBCs are necessary to get SIP traffic between the two universes.

Interconnecting SIP networks to the PSTN has long been a challenge thanks to the use and adoption of different SIP standards. SIP-T was defined by the IETF and first to be used and standardized while SIP-I was defined by the ITU and incorporated into NGN/IMS architectures. There's also the not-so-little matter over multiple flavors of SIP message format variations across standard groups, countries, and vendor-specific implementations for SS7. Acme Packet's new interworking functions solve that.

On the femtocell front, Acme announced it is working with AirWalk Communications, Tatara Systems and Ubiquisys. Acme has demonstrated proven interoperability with its multi-service security gateway and SBC with the three femtocell vendors, so vendors can pick up a working solution without having to lose sleep about interoperability.

For more:
- Acme's interworking and femtocell announcements.

Related articles
Acme Packet talks Q4 results, optimistic for 2009 - FierceVoIP
While we wait for the new Acme Net-Net 3800, we can look back at the 4500 Net-Net

24/03/2009 - First look: New product announcements from VoiceCon 2009

Today, VoiceCon presented more than 20 new products that will be showcased at the enterprise-focused event next week in Orlando - with more announcements expected later this week and throughout next week. Items range from a new low-end session border controller to new multimedia call center solutions.

Acme Packet is bringing the Net-Net 3800, a SBC for small enterprise sites requiring up to 500 secure, high-quality VoIP/UC sessions. Pricing on the Net-Net 3800 is expected to be half that of Acme's existing (well, former) entry-level SBC.

New call center applications include ccFlowCam, a program from Consistacom that delivers an automatic blueprint of call center switch programming drawn directly from working vector programs. The application replaces manual documentation with automation, reducing labor costs and human error, and immediately helping the user identify opportunities, enhancements and changes to improve call handling.

Also in the call center arena, EasyRun is debuting EPICAcce, an "Enterprise-Grade application agnostic contact center." The product, which is delivered on a 2U appliance, includes a robust contact center as well as a complete Asterisk-based voice infrastructure. Entry level costs can start as low as $5,000 for a basic configuration.

Grandstream Networks will be showing off its new GXV3140, a next-generation IP multimedia phone. The GXV3140 includes a 4.3-inch color LCD, tiltable 1.3MP camera, dual-network ports, SD and USB ports, full-duplex speakerphone, and the ability to run a web browser and work with RSS news feeds, among other features.

Sipera Systems will roll out security enhancements for Microsoft OCS deployments for supporting secure remote office and teleworkers, SIP trunk termination and security, and core network PBX support.

For more:
- Read an initial list of VoiceCon new product announcements. Release.

Related article
Of VoiceCon, CTIA and Twitter - FierceVoIP

13/02/2009 - VoIP security firms stand to gain from SIP deployments

The rise of SIP trunking not only has the potential to create savings for enterprises, but it could be a boon for VoIP security firms as well. As enterprises rapidly move to all-IP telecommunications networks for cost savings, some may not realize the security issues at stake.

"Not all operators or enterprises have been slow to address security," said Heavy Reading analyst Jim Hodges. "But given IP and SIP are susceptible to security breaches, it is an increased area of focus for all users."

There are several forms an attack could take including denial of service, rouge VoIP gateways and illegitimate handset usage on VoIP networks. Luckily for enterprises implementing VoIP and SIP systems, there are several network vendors with proven solutions.

"There are multiple hardware and software approaches such as implementing standards-based security access," Hodges said. "There are also firewalls that can be deployed, and finally there are solutions available to monitor applications for spikes in usage."

Prominent companies securing IP networks include Convergence, Cisco and Acme Packet, among others. As more companies deploy VoIP and SIP, these companies stand to gain from increased demand for their security products.

For more:
- see the Light Reading article here

Related articles
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SIP Forum Membership Surges

09/02/2009 - Making sense of good news

Despite the current economic climate, TMC reported a 15 percent jump in attendees at ITEXPO East last week in Miami, and Acme Packet issued a "cautious" estimate of 5 percent growth for 2009. Can we all breath now, or should we continue to hunker down?

As I've said before, ITEXPO is the only/best game in town for an event targeted to the channel partner/VAR space. Digium has thrown its weight behind the event with its Asterisk World track, and some of the ex-VON crowd swallowed their pride to run a track at the show.

All total, around 8,300 people showed up at ITEXPO, says TMC chief guru Richard Tehrani. No Spring VON means some marketing people were freed up from having to split the difference between the two shows, and attendees who might have been dyed Purple in the past now had some free time and budget to check out what Miami was like in the spring.

I was in Miami last week and ITEXPO was a decent show. There were admirable numbers of real bodies on the show floor for the opening and first day of the show, and that's the best you can ask for. Ex-VON types were likely disappointed that there was no lavish evening party, but you don't get lavishness at WalMart either - and WalMart is the guy making money these days.

If my dead-VON theory is correct, there should be a modest bump in attendance at VoiceCon in Orlando next month. It will be modest because VoiceCon figured out the enterprise market a lot faster than pulvermedia did and quickly locked in a lot of vendors with a good targeted story, rather than trying to be all things to all people.

Meanwhile, Acme Packet went out on a limb and said it expects 5 percent growth in 2009. Acme is in a unique position with a dominating chunk of the SBC market. It started moving toward wireless and enterprise sales as its traditional VoIP market matured.

Further, carriers can't sit pat on TDM; they HAVE to move to IP. Sprint, Acme's largest customer, bought the most Acme gear last quarter in the history of the two's relationship. Yes, Sprint of thousands of layoffs and massive customer losses, that Sprint. If Sprint has to spend tightly held capex dollars on SBCs gear, you know there's some light in the tunnel for IP telephony in 2009.

- Doug

09/02/2009 - Acme Packet talks Q4 results, optimistic for 2009

Acme Packet reported a slight uptick in results for the fourth quarter and broke ranks with others in the world by offering earnings guidance for the rest of the year.

Acme saw an 8 percent increase in revenues from the third quarter, for a total of $30.6 million. Year-over-year performance dropped ($31.4 million in Q408) with income falling from $5.2 million last year to $3.7 million. For the year, total revenue increased 3 percent, from $113.1 million in 2007 to $116.4 million in 2008.

Putting its neck out a little bit, Acme expects revenues for 2009 to be between $120 million and $125 million. The company expects wireless in both LTE and WiMAX networks and enterprise SIP trunking to drive revenue growth. Mobile looks especially good for Acme this year.

Counting up service provider stats, Acme is now being bought by 89 of the 100 largest global carriers and is involved with more than 100 IMS deployments. Sprint, Acme's largest customer, purchased more gear in the fourth quarter than in any prior quarter - $4.9 million. It's an interesting number both for Acme and Sprint.

Growth in 2009 is cautiously forecast at 5 percent, as service providers continue to move to an all-IP world to provide voice services.

For more:
- Telephony reports on Acme Packet's optimism. Article.