SAIC May Sell Telcordia
If you don't think something's up, take a look at Telcordia's more recent adjustments: It's tinkered with a more standards-friendly posture, the pursuit of a wireless strategy, and strategic acquisitions of OSS vendors. It's also ditched its conference business and sued some of its largest customers for patent infringement. (See Telcordia Opens Up, Telcordia Shells Out at Last, Telcordia Pockets Patent Payment, Telcordia Dumps Tradeshow, and Telcordia: Buy Buy or Bye Bye.)
Indeed, now Telcordia's parent, Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), may be tiring of it all. It has put the company on the auction block, according to a report in TheDeal.com.
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— Phil Harvey, News Editor, Light Reading
Their reputation is horrible thanks to the incredible gauging that they accomplished during the bubble as well as before and after. The OSS is completely out of date technically, both software-wise and network technology-wise, so who is going to carry on writing code and supporting it? Most software developers wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot barge pole.
Trying to integrate any existing Telcordia business units into a competitive, for-profit company would be a nightmare of the worst degree. Probably the only thing at all interesting to a potential suitor would be the Intellectual Property.
Here is a question that I hope that someone can answer: Who is going to be the repository of standards once Telcordia is sold? This part of the business has not been doing well for quite some time and would most likely be trashed by any buyer. Will North America-based telecom standards be abandoned in this case in favour of the ITU?
Steve.