Wheelings & Dealings: Huawei Acquires SDN Tech from Amartus

Huawei has announced that it has purchased the SDN division of Irish telecom software maker Amartus.

“We are delighted to have acquired the ground breaking Amartus technology,” Zha Jun, president of Huawei’s fixed network product line, said. “The expertise and talented staff from Amartus product group who will be joining Huawei will help deliver our commitment to produce and develop innovative and high quality cloud and network services.”

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the senior team and product staff will join the Irish division of Huawei while Amartus retains its current customer base. The company will concentrate on providing telecoms software development and integration services to telecom providers and vendors.

“We are excited to be able to bring this innovative technology to Huawei at a time when the telecom’s industry is experiencing unprecedented change, driven by software,” Amartus CEO Michael Kearns said.

Huawei’s acquisition will give the company a greater toehold in Europe, as well as helping accelerate its SDN roadmap.

The push for SDN seems to dovetail with Huawei’s leadership in mobile technology. A new report by the GSMA expects smartphones to account for two-thirds of the mobile market in Huawei’s native China by the year’s end.

The country’s large population and large economies of scale means that it has a need for large networks, which SDN makes easier to manage. As more people adopt mobile devices and multiple mobile devices, there will be a greater need for more small cells to handle all of the traffic.

SDN will help carriers cope with managing all of the nodes in its network. And while Huawei will concentrate on Ireland and the rest of Europe with the acquisition, there’s no reason the company can’t apply the technology closer to home.