Ace*Comm Courts Domestic, Foreign Business
!-- STORY START -- Ace*Comm Courts Domestic, Foreign Business By John MakulowichContributing Writer The picture frames on the walls in the Ace*Comm Corp. lobby recall the company's past successes and the value it places on institutional memory. Alongside the faded local newspaper clipping from 1985 profiling the company are letters of commendation from some of the giants of corporate America. The 200-person Gaithe
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Ace*Comm Courts Domestic, Foreign Business
By John Makulowich
Contributing Writer
The picture frames on the walls in the Ace*Comm Corp. lobby recall the company's past successes and the value it places on institutional memory. Alongside the faded local newspaper clipping from 1985 profiling the company are letters of commendation from some of the giants of corporate America.
The 200-person Gaithersburg company, which develops, markets and services operations support systems - the so-called back
office - for networks set up by telecommunications service providers, among others, is doing a lot of things right.
Intersolv photo George T. Jimenez, CEO of Ace*Comm |
The company recently announced a deal with SpectraNet International, a San Diego, Calif.-based CLEC, to use its NetPlus Pro*Vision for automating its billing, customer care and operations support systems. On the global front, agreements were struck in the last few months with Guangzhou Ricsson Computing Co. of China and the KT CAMA project in Korea.
The future looks bright for Ace*Comm, given those deals and the variety of partnering agreements it forged with the likes of AT&T, GTE, Lucent, Microsoft and Newbridge Networks. Cream on the cake came with the recent strong buy recommendation by the investment banking firm, Alex. Brown, which just initiated coverage of the company.
In its report, Alex. Brown estimated the 1998 market for Ace*Comm's products and services at $1.5 billion. Two of its key products are N*Vision and NetPlus. The former, introduced in March 1997, allows real-time network data collection and analysis and can output reports through PCs in seconds. NetPlus, its major product for enterprise customers, automates network management in five areas: security, performance, accounting, fault and configuration.
With consolidation in the telecommunications industry proceeding apace and mergers and acquisitions occurring daily, is Jimenez looking over his shoulder?
"At any given time someone is knocking on the door. We're certainly not courting anyone right now, but a good marriage is not out of the question," Jimenez said.
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