Leading Lights Finalists 2014: Company of the Year (Private) – Part 1

News Analysis Mitch Wagner, Executive Editor, Light Reading 5/30/2014

Mobile and cloud are hot technologies for carriers this year, so of course mobile and cloud vendors dominate the list of finalists in the Company of the Year (Private) category for Leading Lights.

Three of the eight companies tapped as finalists in this category are cloud vendors, and three specialize in mobile. One is both cloud and mobile. Others include a networking equipment vendor, and companies promising to reduce the cost of operating networks.

Customers of the finalists in this category are a winner's circle of top carriers and global enterprises in industries including healthcare, technology, and transportation.

We picked eight finalists for private company of the year, which covers a lot of ground, so we're dividing the overview into two parts. Here's the first part, divided alphabetically.

Affirmed Networks
The Affirmed Mobile Content Cloud is a solution for NFV designed to provide high performance, scalability, resiliency, value-added services, and content-delivery capabilities to mobile networks. Affirmed Networks Inc. claims its Mobile Content Cloud is the first NFV solution to be commercially deployed. AT&T named Affirmed as the vendor for the carrier's Virtualized Evolved Packet Core as part of its Domain 2.0 supplier program. Affirmed is engaged in 18 other commercial deployments, many in Tier 1 networks, and more than 30 trials worldwide. (See AT&T's Cloud Future Takes Shape.)

Affirmed says it can help mobile operators reduce spending to a fraction of current costs by using existing data center infrastructure or a hosted cloud environment with Affirmed technology. Affirmed lowers capex by using standard hardware and existing network infrastructure, and lowers opex by simplifying network operations and decreasing expenses such as energy, real estate, and staffing.

Affirmed enables faster service creation, giving mobile operators the flexibility to try new business models and revenue generating services.

The company has 150 employees. Investors include Charles River Ventures, Matrix Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, KCK Group, Matrix Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and strategic investors T-Venture and Vodafone Ventures. The company is profitable, with $103 million in funding raised to date.

Aptilo Networks AB
Aptilo Service Management Platform provides a Hotspot 2.0-ready service management system to deliver carrier-class WiFi services. The platform makes carriers' WiFi networks into chargeable services by controlling users' logins, experience, and billing. It features 3GPP mobile core integration to provide mobile data offloading, including SIM authentication and support for standard 3GPP WiFI access methods. Optional subsystems include subscriber management, web portals, statistics and reporting, access control, prepaid and charging, roaming, and location-based services. Aptilo SMP has more than 100 deployments in more than 60 countries.

Aptilo Networks AB has more than 90 employees. Norvestor Equity is the major investor. Its top three customers are TeliaSonera Group, Telenor, and Swisscom, with the top 10 customers comprising 60% of revenue. Aptilo has been profitable since 2007. Forecast growth for 2014 is 20% increased revenue and 40% increased profit over 2013.

On the next page: BTI Systems and Casa Systems.

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