Apertio, a company that employs 237 people and has offices in the United States, Germany, Thailand, Malaysia and China, provides customer management tools for mobile operators, such as O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone. The company also offers convergence tools, fact that makes it possible to deliver multimedia content onto subscriber's handsets. Apertio caters to landline operators as well, by offering tools that improve the access to customer data and, therefore, facilitate the implementation of next-generation features and services.

The main character of the Apertio family of products is the "One" suite, which offers a complete range of powerful plug and play mobility applications for current and new generation service providers. Each shares the same common, open, data source, and provides the standard components of a GSM mobile network, along with further common capabilities and applications for fixed and converged networks.

Nokia Siemens acquired the UK-based Apertio for €140 million ($206.3 million), but the transaction is yet to be finalized during the first quarter of this year. Jürgen Walter, head of the Service Core and Applications business, at Nokia Siemens Networks, the man responsible for managing the activities of the unit across all regions, says that mobile operators are striving to deliver "seamless and highly targeted services to end users across various access devices", which means there should be "a unified approach to subscriber data".

Seventy-six percent of communication service providers view consolidation of customer data as a critical challenge in delivering on the opportunities of convergence. With Apertio, Nokia Siemens Networks will be able to build on its strong position in the converged core, adding Apertio's market-leading products and services to strengthen its position in subscriber centric networks. The acquisition follows a preexisting partnership, since null Siemens Networks has already integrated its Home Location Register and Home Subscriber Server products, with Apertio's open platform to deliver a powerful subscriber management solution that is in deployment with leading operators.