MACH, the global clearing house business, has purchased fraud management vendor OpTel Informatik for an undisclosed sum; see here for the press release on MACH’s site.
OpTel Informatik started business in 1998 as a spin-off from T-Mobile. It has performed solidly in the German market, but has only made modest sales elsewhere. In a world where returns must be maximized across all markets, OpTel Informatik has lacked the scale or partners to make the most of its software. MACH’s acquisition will likely see them try to upsell the services provided to their vast array of customers by connecting OpTel Informatik’s functionality to the data that MACH already processes on behalf of telcos. This is potentially a good fit, though the success of the combination will depend a lot on way the additional services are priced and the freedom of thought and movement exhibited by staff working for MACH’s current customers.
Eric,
A related story, “Fraud is a Wind that Always Blows” has been published on B/OSS magazine today.
http://www.billingworld.com/blogs/baker/2011/07/fraud-is-a-wind-that-always-blows-and-other-wisdo.aspx
It’s an interview I held with Gary Beck, CEO of Beck Computers, a small – practically unknown — firm in Long Beach, California who, among other things, is the sole FM provider for a Tier 1 telco in North America.
Beck gives some contrarian opinions, such as why relational databases don’t cut the mustard in high end FM systems, and why black box systems still have their place in a telco world dominated by Unix and SQL.
Then he tells one of most entertaining sales story I’ve ever heard about how WilTel completely removed Beck as its FM supplier, then brought them back 6 months later!
Got a feeling talkRA readers are gonna like this one.