Volubill on Brink of Being Acquired

Policy and charging specialist Volubill is set to be bought by an unknown suitor, Light Reading believes, a move that would make it the latest in a series of policy control-related acquisitions.

The company declined to comment on the speculation.

If the planned deal goes through, the London-based Service Provider Information Technology (SPIT) vendor would join the likes of Camiant, Tekelec, Bridgewater and Broadhop as policy-related vendors that have been snapped up. (See Openet Buys Policy Startup, Oracle Snaps Up Tekelec, Cisco Adds Policy Smarts With BroadHop Buy, and Amdocs to Buy Bridgewater for $215M.)

Volubill has mostly been successful in selling to Tier 2 and Tier 3 operators, though a number of these are the local operations of much larger players such as Orange (NYSE: FTE). In total it has had its technology deployed in about 70 operators in 40 countries, about 25 of which are Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF) deployments.

The company, which has raised about €35 million (US$47.4 million) from its VC backers over the years, experienced a strong increase in sales from 2008 to 2010, but the market slowdown in recent years, particularly in Europe, and increasing competition from larger vendors is believed to have hit the company's growth, with its annual revenues believed to have stalled at around the €25 million ($33.8 million) mark. (See Policy Specialists Squeezed by Vendor Giants.)

Its partners include Alcatel-Lucent, Allot Ltd. (Nasdaq: ALLT), F5 Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: FFIV), IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM), ipoque GmbH , Procera Networks , and Sandvine Inc. .

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— Ray Le Maistre, Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading