Aricent gets $60 Million Private Funding
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Bangalore: Aricent , a California headquartered outsourcer and software developer spun out of Flextronics, said that two firms, KKR and The Family Office, invested $60 million to support the firms plans for expansion and acquisitions. KKR was an existing investor that contributed $25 million. Newcomer The Family Office, a wealth management advisor in Bahrain, signed on with $35 million because Aricent plans to open offices in the Middle East. "The opportunity in the Middle East - it's a fantastic infrastructure build-out story," said Keith Higgins, Aricent's Vice President of marketing. Emerging markets such as EMEA, Africa and Asia Pacific have never had extensive legacy networks, he added. So, telecom carriers working in those regions, along with equipment makers and software partners, are able to jump from providing one-dimensional to 4G technologies such as WiMAX. "It's an exciting part of the world just because you're seeing communications become mainstream very quickly," Higgins was quoted as saying by Exchangemag.com. That kind of activity - an outsourcer working with the world's telecom service providers - will lead to the rapid growth in telecom operations and management systems spending as predicted by Gartner. The numbers, by the way, will leap from $74.6 billion this year to the aforementioned $96.8 billion in four years. Aricent aims to help carriers augment their R&D, and get new products and services to market sooner, Higgins said. Projects involve hundreds of Aricent's 8,000-plus employees - some of whom serve as dedicated project managers - and millions of dollars.

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