Aricent Group is a global innovation^{[clarification needed]} and technology services company. The company develops software and provides technology services to application, infrastructure, and service providers with operations in 19 countries worldwide.

The company claims to be one of the largest privately held companies in Silicon Valley, with 800 customers, and employs more than 10,000 consultants, designers, and engineers at 36 locations worldwide.^[2] The company licenses its own software products for use in telecommunications design, manufacturing, and service with 40+ years' design experience through frog, including products for Apple, Disney, GE, HP, Intel, Sony, and many other Fortune 500 brands. Aricent has been ranked as 17th in Top 20 IT services exports firms in India in terms of total revenue in 24th annual survey conducted by Dataquest, CyberMedia group journal in July 2010.^[3] Aricent Technologies is ranked #19 in India IT companies and overall #451 in Fortune India 500 list in 2011.^[4]

Aricent Group is the successor to Hughes Software Systems, which was established in 1991, as well as Flextronics Software Systems, which was created in 2004 after the parent company's acquisition. In 2006, Flextronics sold 85% company to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR)^[5] and Sequoia Capital.^[6] Flextronics retained 15% ownership.^[7]

Frog, acquired by Flextronics in 2004, is a company of the Aricent Group.

History[link]

• 1991: Established as Hughes Software Systems (HSS) in New Delhi developing software solutions in the areas of VSAT-based networks for voice and data, cellular wireless telephony, packet switching, and multi-protocol routing.
• 1995: Moved to Electronic City, Gurgaon, a suburb of New Delhi, India.
• 1998: Established a development center in Bangalore, India to develop of software for the Internet and Internet Protocol-based solutions and applications.
• 1999: Began a voice-over-packet business, went public via India's first book building issue, and opened several offices in the U.S.
• 2000: Opened offices in the U.K. and Germany.
• 2001: Opened offices in Japan
• 2003: Established a wireless equipment development center in Nuremberg, Germany.
• 2004: Was acquired by Flextronics, and changed its name to Flextronics Software Systems
• 2004: Acquired frog design for approximately $25 million.^[8]
• 2005: Expanded development operations in Kiev, Kherson and Vinnytsia in the Ukraine; Randburg, South Africa; and Beijing, China. Was delisted from India's stock market in preparation for sale.^[9]
• 2006: Was acquired by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Sequoia Capital as part of a $900 million sales of software companies.^[10] The transaction represented the largest private equity buy-out in Indian history.^[11]
• 2006: Renamed Aricent with headquarters in Palo Alto, California.
• 2008: The Family Office, a multi-family office company with headquarters in Bahrain also joined in funding Aricent.^[12]
• 2009: Aricent Approved for Latest CMMI Level 5 Certification.^[13]
• 2011: Rebranded to Aricent Group.

Products[link]

Aricent Group licenses more than 125 software frameworks to equipment manufacturers, device manufacturers and service providers, including:

• Femtocell/Picocell software
• General Packet Radio System (GPRS) Service Node
• IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS)
• Media Gateway Framework
• Mobile TV (DVB-H) solution
• Music player application
• PacketCable Call Management Server
• SIP Server framework
• Softswitch
• DirectShow Filters for Mobile and PC
• Video/Audio codecs
• Streaming Multimedia Content
• UMTS terminal stack
• aTCA-cRNC
• Voice Call Continuity server
• Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)
• WiMAX ASN Gateway framework
• Long Term Evolution (LTE)

Clients[link]

Aricent Group lists large telecommunications firms, while others come from consumer electronics, financial services, energy, healthcare, data equipment manufacturers, device makers, and service providers as clients, including: Airtel, Alcatel-Lucent, Alltel, Cisco Systems, Comverse, Ericsson, Hughes Network Systems, Inmarsat, Juniper Networks, LG Electronics, Motorola, NEC, Newport Networks Limited, Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks, Panasonic, Pantech, Polycom, Samsung, Siemens, Sony Ericsson, Tellabs, Texas Instruments, Virgin Mobile, Vodafone, Tekelec, Wireless and Convergence, Intel, MTV, HP, Disney.

Standards Organizations[link]

Aricent Group is a contributing member of standards bodies in the communications industry, including:

• International Telecommunication Standardization Sector
• 3GPP
• European Telecommunication Standards Institute
• Internet Engineering Task Force
• International Multimedia Telecommunication Consortium
• OMA Open Mobile Alliance

Board of directors[link]

• Adam H. Clammer
• Joe Forehand
• James H. Greene, Jr.
• Paul Read
• Nathaniel H. Taylor
• Arun Sarin

See also[link]

• Fortune India 500
• List of companies of India

Footnotes[link]

http://www.aricent.com/about/press/aricent-unveils-new-strategic-brand-positioning-becomes-aricent-group.html

1. ^ "About Us" (Webpage). Aricent. http://www.aricent.com/about. Retrieved 2010-08-01. 
2. ^ "About Us". Aricent. http://www.aricent.com/About%20US/Default.aspx. Retrieved 2010-08-01. 
3. ^ "Top 20 IT services exports firms in India". rediff.com. http://business.rediff.com/slide-show/2010/jul/19/slide-show-1-tech-top-20-it-companies-of-india.htm. Retrieved 2010-07-19. 
4. ^ "Fortune India 500 complete list". http://www.mphasis.com/pdfs/FortuneRanking.pdf. 
5. ^ "KKR Current Investments". KKR. Archived from the original on 2006-08-25. http://web.archive.org/web/20060825033305/http://www.kkr.com/investments/current-invest.html. Retrieved 2006-10-26. 
6. ^ "Aricent - Sequoia Capital". Sequoia Capital. http://www.sequoiacap.com/company/aricent/. Retrieved 2006-10-26. 
7. ^ "Aricent Debuts As Communications Software Pure Play". KKR. Archived from the original on 2006-10-31. http://web.archive.org/web/20061031224639/http://www.kkr.com/news/press_releases/2006/10-26-06.html. Retrieved 2006-10-26. 
8. ^ "One Great Leap for Frog Design". BusinessWeek. http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/apr2006/id20060419_040862.htm. Retrieved 2010-03-04. 
9. ^ "Flextronics Proposes Acquision of Flextronics Software Systems Limited Shares" (PDF). Flextronics. http://www.flextronics.com/press/pages/releasearchives.aspx. Retrieved 2010-03-04. ^{[dead link]}
10. ^ "Aricent - Sequoia Capital". Sequoia Capital. http://www.sequoiacap.com/company/aricent/. Retrieved 2006-10-26. 
11. ^ "Buyout deal by KKR is India's largest ever". International Herald Tribune. http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/17/business/kkr.php. Retrieved 2006-10-31. 
12. ^ "Aricent Announces New Funding from KKR and The Family Office". Aricent. http://www.aricent.com/en/releases/content.press_release/kkr_tfo_investment_2008-09-23.html. Retrieved 2008-09-23. 
13. ^ "Aricent Approved for Latest CMMI Level 5 Certification". Aricent. http://www.aricent.com/Press%20Center/Press%20Releases/012109LevelFive.aspx. Retrieved 2009-01-21. 

External links[link]

• Aricent Group

John A. Zachman (born December 16, 1934) is an American business and IT consultant,^[1] early pioneer of enterprise architecture, Chief Executive Officer of Zachman International, and originator of the Zachman Framework.

Biography[link]

Zachman holds a degree in Chemistry from Northwestern University. He served for a number of years as a line officer in the United States Navy, and is a retired Commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve.^[2]

He joined IBM Corporation in 1964 and held various marketing-related positions in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. He became involved with Strategic Information Planning methodologies in 1970.^[3] and in 1973 he was assigned responsibility for the Business Systems Planning (BSP) program in IBM’s Western Region.^[4] In 1984 he began to concentrate on Information Systems Architecture. In 1989 at IBM he joined the CASE Support organization of the Application Enabling Marketing Center, where he worked as a consultant in areas of Information Systems Planning and Architecture.^[3] He retired at IBM in 1990, having served them for 26 years. Afterwards he co-founded, with Samuel B. Holcman, the Zachman Institute for Framework Advancement, which was discontinued in December, 2008.

He is a Fellow for the College of Business Administration of the University of North Texas. He serves on the Advisory Board for Boston University’s Institute for Leading in a Dynamic Economy (BUILDE), the Advisory Board for the Data Resource Management Program at the University of Washington and the Advisory Board of the Data Administration Management Association International (DAMA-I).^[2]

In May 2002 he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Advisory Board of the Data Administration Management Association International.^[5] He was awarded the 2004 Oakland University, Applied Technology in Business (ATIB), Award for IS Excellence and Innovation.^[2]

Work[link]

John Zachman is one of the founding developers of IBM's Business Systems Planning (BSP),^[6] and worked on their Executive team planning techniques (Intensive Planning). In 1987 he originated the Zachman Framework a standard for classifying the descriptive representations (models) that comprise enterprise architecture.

Business Systems Planning[link]

Business System Planning (BSP) is a method for analyzing, defining and designing an information architecture of organizations. It was first issued by IBM in 1981, though the initial work on BSP began in the early 1970s.^[7] At first, it was for IBM internal use only. Later it was made available to customers^[7] and this method became an important tool for many organizations. It is a very complex method dealing with data, processes, strategies, aims and organizational departments which are interconnected.

Business Systems Planning (BSP) and Business Information Control Study (BICS) according to Zachman (1982),^[8] are both "information system planning methodologies that specifically employ enterprise analysis techniques in the course of their analyses. Underlying the BSP and BICS analyses are the data management problems that result from systems design approaches that optimize the management of technology at the expense of managing the data". The both methodologies have similarities and differences, and strengths and weaknesses. The "choice between using one or the other methodology is strongly influenced by the immediate intent of the study sponsor, tempered by the limiting factors currently surrounding the BICS methodology".^[8]

Zachman Framework[link]

The Zachman Framework according to Zachman (2008)^[9] is "a schema - the intersection between two historical classifications that have been in use for literally thousands of years".

• "The first is the fundamentals of communication found in the primitive interrogatives: What, How, When, Who, Where, and Why. It is the integration of answers to these questions that enables the comprehensive, composite description of complex ideas".
• "The second is derived from reification, the transformation of an abstract idea into an instantiation that was initially postulated by ancient Greek philosophers and is labeled in the Framework: Identification, Definition, Representation, Specification, Configuration and Instantiation. ..."

More specifically, the Zachman Framework is "an ontology - a theory of the existence of a structured set of essential components of an object for which explicit expressions is necessary and perhaps even mandatory for creating, operating, and changing the object (the object being an Enterprise, a department, a value chain, a "sliver," a solution, a project, an airplane, a building, a product, a profession of whatever of whatever)".^[9]

According to Zachman, "this ontology was derived from analogous structures that are found in the older disciplines of Architecture/Construction and Engineering/Manufacturing that classify and organize the design artifacts created in the process of designing and producing complex physical products (e.g. buildings or airplanes). It uses a two dimensional classification model based on the six basic interrogatives (What, How, Where, Who, When, and Why) intersecting six distinct perspectives, which relate to stakeholder groups (Planner, Owner, Designer, Builder, Implementer and Worker). The intersecting cells of the Framework correspond to models which, if documented, can provide a holistic view of the enterprise".^[10]

Publications[link]

Zachman had published two books, several articles^[11] and forewords to more than a hundred books on related subjects. A selection:

• 1997. Data stores, data warehousing, and the Zachman Framework : managing enterprise knowledge. With Bill Inmon and Jonathan G. Geiger. New York : McGraw-Hill.
• 2002. The Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture : A Primer on Enterprise Engineering and Manufacturing.

Articles:

• 1978. "The Information Systems Management System: A Framework for Planning". In: DATA BASE 9(3): pp. 8–13.
• 1982. "Business Systems Planning and Business Information Control Study: A comparisment. In: IBM Systems Journal, vol 21, no 3, 1982. p. 31-53.
• 1987. "A Framework for Information Systems Architecture". In: IBM Systems Journal, vol. 26, no. 3, 1987. IBM Publication G321-5298.
• 1992. "Extending and Formalizing the Framework for Information Systems Architecture" with John F. Sowa In: IBM Systems Journal, Vol 31, no.3, 1992. p. 590-616
• 2007. "Architecture Is Architecture Is Architecture". Paper Zachman International ([1] version).

References[link]

External links[link]

• [2] at zachman.com.