Cisco is buying cloud-native platform pioneer for mobile services, Working Group Two (Wgtwo) for 136 million euros ($150 million) from Norwegian telecom operator Telenor. The technology is intended to boost the Cisco Mobility Services platform.
Wgtwo was set up in 2013 within Telenor as a development group to build mobile solutions on mobile networks. It also focused on making the mobile core network programmable to act as an innovation platform.
In 2017, Wgtwo was privatized with the Norwegian telecom operator as a major shareholder. Eventually, the developments led to a cloud-based mobile core platform for telecom operators. So now the mobile core specialist is being sold to the larger Cisco for 136 million euros.
Impulse for Cisco Mobility Services platform
With the acquisition of Wgtwo, Cisco wants to further strengthen its mobile portfolio. According to the network giant, the acquisition should give a “turbo boost” to its Cisco Mobility Services platform launched earlier this year.
The Cisco Mobility Services platform provides customers with a full stack of support for building, managing and delivering new mobile services around the world. The Wgtwo platform should provide the necessary playbooks and operating models for this purpose. The end goal is to simplifying mobile network architectures to the point of ultimately delivering radical and innovative mobile services.
Rollout of edge services
Specifically, the Wgtwo platform, together with the Cisco Mobility Services platform, should boost the rollout of edge services, spearheading an API-first strategy. Especially for the application partners, the enterprise end customers and the various service providers or operators.
Wgtwo will merge into Cisco Networking, and the deal should be finalized by the end of October this year. The acquisition is the second announced by Cisco this month. It also recently acquired BGP monitoring specialist Code BGP.
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