BATM Advanced Communications Limited (LON:BVC) has signed its first tier-1 customer for its NFVTime virtual networking solution.
The customer is a leading telecommunications provider to multi-national enterprises and communication service providers globally and is headquartered in Asia. It has entered a three-year licensing agreement, having carried out a successful proof-of-concept trial.
BATM, which specialises in real-time technologies for computer networks, said the customer will use its NFVTime operating system to create virtual networks for customers and for operators that its services on a wholesale basis.
BATM will receive a licence fee for a minimum of three years for each deployment of NFVTime, with a separate deployment required for each end customer (whether direct or via an operator) that adopts the solution.
"This agreement represents the achievement of a fundamental milestone in the execution of our NFV strategy, and is something we have been working towards for several years,” said Zvi Marom, the chief executive officer of BATM.
“It follows a successful proof-of-concept, like what we recently announced with Vodafone and Arm as well as many others, and we are making good progress towards the potential contract stage with those as well. We believe this agreement and the NFV market will prove lucrative for BATM,” he added,
BATM shares surged 17% to 137.17p by early afternoon on Thursday, where they are up more than 250% this year.
Analysts at house broker Shore Capital said they believe that the contract “represents the emergence of a material, soon to be live, reference customer/site for the group”.
“Furthermore, this demonstrates the leadership that BATM has been striving for with its NFV solution, the market is a materially large one for these virtualisation services with the ecosystem stretching into the many tens of billions of dollars of value, in our view.”
“We wait with interest on further news on BATM’s emerging pipeline with customers for NFV services. Potential is high, the need is great. We expect to see the pipeline build steadily, with an initial focus on further Tier 1 providers, and be accompanied by further announcements from BATM in due course, out into FY2021”, the analysts added.
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