IP Unity, the provider of carrier-grade media servers, application servers, and real-time multimedia applications, is hooking up with Glenayre Messaging, a division of Glenayre Technologies.

 

This is how the official language read: “the parties have entered into a definitive asset purchase agreement for the consolidation of the two entities.”

 

The resulting company, to be called IP Unity Glenayre will be one of the larger independent suppliers of carrier-class, rich media messaging systems and advanced IP multimedia solutions serving both wireline and wireless carriers.

 

This move looks good for a number of reasons. According to a company statement, the two firms have no common customers and basically play in different geographies and networks. Also, researchers believe that IMS is set to explode.

 

A recent study from ABI Research predicts that telecom carriers around the world will spend $10.1 billion in IMS infrastructure over the next five years. They also forecast that the same carriers will generate a total of $49.6 billion in revenue from IMS applications over the same period.

 

In fact, ABI Research analyst, Ian Cox believes, “Rich voice services will represent the lion’s share of IMS ARPU for fixed networks, but mobile operators will deploy a greater diversity of services over the next five years, including push-to-talk, interactive games, Web browsing, rich voice, streaming content and instant multimedia messaging.”

 

If all goes well, IP Unity Glenayre should be well-positioned to provide the types of services that will be in high demand.