ICT solutions and services expert, Atio Corporation (Pty) Ltd has acquired UK-based X-Plor Holdings Ltd in a move to boost its telecoms service offering in Africa and Europe.
X-Plor is the provider of a unique autonomous service assurance test system for mobile operators focusing on network performance and revenue assurance.
Over the past six years, Atio Corporation`s Telecom Services division has focused on entrenching itself in both the African and European telecom services market, offering managed services for quality assessment and revenue assurance solutions to the GSM industry.
This service offering saw the Atio Telecom Services team making use of X-Plor`s products. By acquiring X-Plor, Atio Corporation immediately boosts its presence on both continents, obtains valuable intellectual property and is able to market itself aggressively.
"There is great synergy between our businesses and it made sense to combine forces," says Chris Van der Sande, CEO, Atio Corporation. "By acquiring X-Plor, Atio Corporation nearly doubles the size of its telecom services business; inherits a strong development arm with great intellectual property, a sales team and a well established support infrastructure in SA and the UK."
According to Van der Sande, Atio Corporation`s strength lies in the provision of managed services, while X-Plor offers an internationally recognised test system. "Combining the two companies results in an extremely focused team of ICT specialists able to provide both Europe and Africa with the solutions and services," says Van der Sande.
X-Plor`s local team will relocate from Midrand to Atio Corporation`s head office in Rivonia, while Atio Corporation will take over the X-Plor team and office based in London.
Tim Courtenay, Managing Director of X-Plor, says: "The results of this partnership will be visible immediately, providing GSM operators in Europe and Africa with unprecedented choice and capability in network performance and revenue assurance testing."
Van der Sande concludes: "This deal should have an extremely positive effect on the local economy. It has resulted in the acquisition of valuable overseas intellectual property and brings with it a new skills set to Atio and its employees. It will also boost ATIO`s export revenues and ensure significant local job creation."
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ATIO Corporation entered the fledgling ICT industry more than a decade ago, and has since built up a comprehensive track record of successes as a leading South African ICT services and solutions provider. ATIO Corporation is a black empowered company and consists of two semi-autonomous divisions, ATIO - Intelligent Business Solutions (IBS) and ATIO - Telecom Services.
ATIO - IBS specialises in interaction management solutions, integrating multimedia communications channels that afford management an integrated and real-time view of all company business interactions, at any given time. ATIO-IBS focuses on contact centres, unified and mobile communications, customer relationship management, multimedia recording and telephony.
ATIO - Telecom Services (TS) is an international provider of quality and revenue assurance services and test-systems to GSM operators. ATIO - TS has been involved in the GSM industry since 1998. It has provided managed services to a number of GSM operators located in the EU, the Middle East and Africa. In addition to these services, ATIO - TS has recently launched a Quality Assurance Test System called ASQA that has been developed to evaluate SMS, voicemail, prepaid, GPRS, MMS and roaming mobile services.
X-Plor
X-Plor, which started in 1998, is a leading test system vendor with two main product lines - X-Plor Revenue Assurance and X-Plor Network Performance.
X-Plor Revenue Assurance is a unique test-call generator based system used to measure the accuracy and integrity of telecom networks` metering and billing systems. The X-Plor Network Performance system allows mobile network operators to autonomously and independently measure the quality of their networks from the perspective of their subscribers. X-Plor has customers throughout Europe, Africa and the Middle East.