Nokia Siemens Networks announced today that it is strengthening its existing partnership with U.K.-based OpenCloud by investing £4 million in the application server and service broker systems provider. By the terms of the agreement, Nokia Siemens Networks will not only lead OpenCloud’s latest investment round, it will strengthen the two companies’ OEM relationship. OpenCloud’s technology will be integrated into Nokia Siemens Network’s charge@once suite.

Nokia Siemens Networks is a joint venture between Finnish wireless company Nokia and Germany’s Siemens AG. charge@once is Nokia Siemens Network’s modular system for wireless prepaid charging, postpaid billing and customer care. It allows service providers to offer customers service and price plans based on personal preferences. Customers can gain access to their usage information and billing costs online, regardless of their payment method.

"This investment will allow Nokia Siemens Networks to address the considerable Converged Charging and Service Delivery Platform opportunities in the market," Rick Centeno, head of Charging, Billing and Care at Nokia Siemens. "We will be able to better provide our customers with an integrated offering to fit their end-to-end needs around service development, delivery, control and charging."

Nokia Siemens Networks and OpenCloud have been partners for the last two years. The relationship has resulted in a number of significant customer wins. In June of this year, Nokia Siemens Networks signed a contract with wireless provider Vodafone in Portugal, which uses OpenCloud’s Service Broker technology to reduce the time and cost of launching new services.

“Having successfully worked together with Nokia Siemens Networks, we are pleased to bring our partnership to a strategic level,” says Jeff Gordon, CEO of OpenCloud. “The investment will be used to accelerate our portfolio development to support the fast growth of the Service Delivery Platform market, while leveraging Nokia Siemens Networks’ global customer reach, expertise and delivery capabilities.”

The joint offering between the two companies is expected to allow service providers to converge existing telecommunication assets and new IP capabilities to deliver next-generation services, and extend existing and new services to the entire subscriber base: postpaid or prepaid, fixed or mobile. Service providers will also be able to combine existing services and new rich content and applications into bundles, monetize services through real-time charging mechanisms, accelerate the time-to-market for new services, and expose telecommunication and IP assets and services to application developers.