In its third major acquisition of the year, Oracle today announced plans to buy Tekelec, which makes a range of tools to help service providers handle the explosion in traffic due to the onslaught of mobile and other connected devices.

The buy follows in the heels of Oracle’s decision last month to buy Acme Packet for $2.1 billion. Acme Packet develops session delivery network tools designed to help IP networks better deliver voice data and unified communications.        

Tekelec develops entirely complimentary solutions to Acme, and is aimed at managing and optimizing the traffic that runs over these same networks.

The Acme and Tekelec deals give Oracle an instant and large foothold in the next-generation network service provider space. Acme brings over 1,925 customers to the Oracle table, while Tekelec currently serves more than 300 customers.

Both have partners in over 100 countries. Terms of the Tekelec deal are being kept private.

Oracle believes the Tekelec technology is a boon to providers, making them more efficient and ultimately helping them deliver services. “As connected devices and applications become ubiquitous, intelligent network and service control technologies are required to enable service providers to efficiently deploy all-IP networks, and deliver and monetize innovative communication services,” remarked Bhaskar Gorti, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Communications. “The combination of Oracle and Tekelec will provide service providers with the most complete solution to manage their businesses across customer engagement, business and network operations, service delivery and end user applications.”

Tekelec is also focused on how its technology, in conjunction with Oracle’s, changes what service providers can offer, and helps them manage their booming networks more efficiently. “In an increasingly mobile and social world, customer experience is about optimizing network performance and personalizing services based on what engages, moves, and inspires people,” noted Ron de Lange, president and CEO at Tekelec. “Together with Oracle, we expect to accelerate the pace of service innovation by helping service providers transform the way they manage and monetize the explosive growth in signaling and data traffic on their networks.”

Tekelec’s portfolio is based on subscriber data management, network signaling and policy control. Data traffic and network signaling are particular stress points for network service providers who face more and more customers using more and more devices.

Keeping those networks running smoothly, meeting SLAs and providing a satisfying user experience requires the kind of intelligent network control technologies that Tekelec offers.

Oracle already offers service delivery platforms (SDP), operational support systems and business support systems to service providers through Oracle Communications.

Acme Packet adds to that data delivery technology portfolio. And Tekelec will augment the story further with high level management of all this service provider traffic with its network signaling tools SS7 and Diameter.

“Oracle plans to make Tekelec's network signaling, policy control and subscriber data management solutions a part of its Oracle Communications portfolio to help service providers efficiently allocate network resources and monetize personalized communications services. Oracle anticipates that the combination of Tekelec, Acme Packet and Oracle Communications will create the industry's most complete portfolio spanning Customer Relationship Management, Business and Operational Support Systems, Service Delivery Platforms, Network and Service Control, and end-user applications. This will enable service providers to rapidly create and deploy innovative communications services, engage customers, improve operations, and control network resources,” wrote Gorti in a letter to Oracle and Tekelec partners.

Oracle expects to close the Tekelec deal in the first half of this year. The Acme Packets acquisition is likewise still pending.

TechZone360 covered Tekelec’s unveiling of its new ThinkingNetworks vision. To find out more, click here.

In January the database giant announced plans to buy Nimbula which has an infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platform that competes against Amazon EC2. Last year, Oracle made nearly a dozen acquisitions.

Edited by Braden Becker