Motorola to buy quad-play service delivery vendor

Motorola has agreed to acquire Leapstone Systems, which makes software that helps carriers create and deliver services for wired and wireless networks.

Terms of the deal were not announced. Privately held Leapstone, in Somerset, New Jersey, was founded in 2001 and counts AT&T and Verizon among its customers. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of this year.

Leapstone's CCE (Communications Convergence Engine) is a service delivery platform that can be used for many types of services, including fast-growing technologies like IPTV and VoIP.

Telecommunications service providers and cable operators are bundling voice, video, data, and mobile services so they can offer subscribers new applications and make them more loyal. This "three-screen" strategy lets them serve customers on their TVs, PCs, and 3G cell phones. For example, a carrier with both an IPTV and a cellular service might let subscribers watch some shows on their TV or their mobile phone.

The Leapstone acquisition gives Motorola an overarching service delivery system for all these services. CCE complements Motorola's Global Applications Management Architecture, which is specific to mobile networks and will continue to be used for certain mobile functions, said Sean Matthews, a senior director of strategy at Motorola. The services created and delivered with CCE would not be specific to Motorola's own broadband set-top boxes, he said.

Leapstone's 75 employees, who work at a Canadian development center and other facilities as well as in Somerset, all will join Motorola, Matthews said.