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Tatara Systems Expands into Europe05/18/2004 - Tatara Systems opens UK office to address growing European demand for services on mobile computing devices
London – Tatara Systems, Inc., a developer of technology platforms for service providers looking to increase revenue and extend their brands to mobile computing devices such as laptops and personal digital assistants (PDAs), today announced the opening of its first European office in London, United Kingdom. The London office will act as a European base for the sales and marketing of Tatara’s flagship product – the Tatara Mobile Services Control Platform. The platform enables branded ‘home’ service providers such as mobile, fixed and cable operators to extend a combination of connectivity and value-added services profitably to their end users across both Local Area Networks (LANs) and Wide Area Networks (WANs). Increasingly, providers of wireless data services are keen to offer customers a consistent, branded and feature-rich service experience regardless of the type or owner of the network that a customer is connected to at any given time. Tatara’s Mobile Services Control Platform enables service providers to provide their customers with seamless connectivity and access to value-added services across their own and roaming partners’ wireless LANs and WANs including Wi-Fi hotspots, General Packet Radio Services (GPRS), Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE) and Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS). Through its patent-pending architecture, Tatara’s platform addresses two key challenges that service providers face in this heterogeneous network environment –how to maintain adequate control of the service when they don’t own the network and how to extend value-added services to the customer in this environment. From its London office, Tatara will market the benefits of its platform to a wide range of European telecommunications service providers, including mobile network operators, wireline carriers, cable operators, managed service providers and aggregators. In addition to enabling seamless customer roaming across multiple networks, Tatara’s product range also provides operators with full visibility into network performance and customer behaviour even when the customer is on a partner network, and enables simplified customer billing. “Service providers realise that if they are to keep customers loyal, they need to provide wireless data services that support mobile computing devices such as laptops and PDAs and that allow for roaming not just across partner networks, but also across the different network types, from Wi-Fi to GPRS to UMTS,” said Kevin Jackson, VP of marketing and product management for Tatara Systems. “Tatara enables its customers to offer these services profitably and without sacrificing control of their brand or losing the direct relationships they have established with their subscribers.” Richard Hubble, the newly-appointed EMEA sales director for Tatara Systems, said: “The UK was the first European country to roll out a UMTS network, and remains one of the most complex European markets in terms of the number and type of available wireless data networks. With Tatara, service providers can turn the uncertainty surrounding future network standards into a profitable advantage, by allowing customers to roam freely between network owners and network types.” Tim Gower, telecoms and wireless analyst for Datamonitor agreed: “Tatara Systems has a unique go-to-market approach with a business model focusing on how service providers can maximise opportunities across different network types,” he said. “Along with the introduction of next-generation wireless networks, there is also set to be a large increase in public wireless LAN (hotspot) usage across Europe. Ultimately customers are unlikely to care about the underlying wireless network from which they are accessing their data, as long as there is an effective connection.” Tatara’s London office is located on the Strand. Its opening sees the appointment of Richard Hubble as EMEA sales director, Tatara Systems, Tatara Systems. About Tatara Systems Tatara Systems develops technology platforms that enable telecommunications service providers to increase revenue and to extend the relevance of their brands by delivering both seamless connectivity and value-added services to users of mobile computing devices such as laptops and PDAs. Tatara’s Mobile Services Control Platform serves the needs of branded carriers such as wireless, wireline, cable and managed service providers which maintain a direct service and billing relationship with an individual end user or enterprise. Using Tatara’s solution, remote access, location- and presence-based services are cost-effectively extended to mobile computing device users over the platform’s real-time, secure communications link direct from the home provider to the end user – providing the user access to a rich and consistent set of capabilities regardless of who owns the access network currently being used and regardless of whether that network is a LAN (e.g. Wi-Fi, WiMAX, Ethernet) or WAN (e.g. GPRS, EDGE, UMTS) technology. Tatara’s patent-pending solution supports the delivery of carrier-class services to mobile computing devices over seamless ‘virtual access networks’ without compromising the home provider’s ability to support and manage the service and without adversely impacting service economics by requiring any special hardware or software to be deployed in the access network. Tatara Systems is a privately held company based outside Boston, Massachusetts with European headquarters in London. The company is backed by Highland Capital Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners. More details are available at www.tatarasystems.com |
