Ariston Global Acquires The Strata Group

Ariston Global, a company focused on acquiring, building and operating software and services companies that have competencies in providing enabling tools, services and solutions to the communications industry worldwide, has announced its acquisition of The Strata Group.

Based in St. Louis, Missouri, The Strata Group provides software applications for web-based self-care to both service providers and their customers. The Strata Group’s customer self-service (“CSS”) solutions are deployed in traditional and next generation networks serving both commercial and consumer market applications. The Strata Group serves a global customer base including service providers in North America, Europe, Australia, and the Asia/Pacific region.

The acquisition strengthens the Ariston portfolio of revenue management and customer self-service tool sets that offer communication service providers’ greater control over their operational costs, product functionality, customer satisfaction, and revenue streams. With these high performance management tools, providers can leverage real time access to core network elements, event usage and customer data. In turn, providers can be quicker to market with pre-paid services, enhanced applications, VoIP/NGN deployment, and legacy network migration. This will be critical as providers move forward with IMS, 3G or related platforms.

Ariston Global, a Spire Capital Partners portfolio company, was established in the second quarter of 2006 with the acquisition of TeleSciences, Inc. TeleSciences provides software solutions to communications service providers for mediation and leverages its unique competencies for CSS applications. TeleSciences also has a global presence with communications customers in multiple countries in North America, South America, Europe and Asia. “Strata and TeleSciences both offer superior software product applications to communications service providers around the world,” commented Steve Dubnik, Co-CEO of Ariston Global.

SYNERGY LEADS TO REVENUE MANAGEMENT OPPORTUNITIES FOR SERVICE PROVIDERS

“The acquisition of The Strata Group is perfectly aligned with our view that service providers need to capture the economic benefits of automation while customers demand web-based applications as a key factor in dynamic and flexible product offerings,” commented Ariston Global Co-CEO, Kevin Dickens.

About Ariston Global Partners, L.L.C.
Ariston Global acquires, develops and operates communications services companies including software, customer care, resource management, provisioning, solution/hardware testing, system integration, outsourced services and other tool set companies required by equipment providers and communications carriers. Ariston Global is based in Rochester, NY.

About The Strata Group
The Strata Group is a global leader in subscriber, web-based self-care for traditional and next generation communication service providers and their subscribers. Their modular product solutions allow service providers to take control of their costs and services through powerful, yet simple user interfaces. Their business and residential solutions provide end users with extraordinary control of their own communication services for such things as Call Management, Service Creation, Provisioning, and Traffic Reporting. The Strata Group product set provides users with capabilities such as Click-to-Call, Service Package and Feature Management, Unified Messaging Management, Call Logs, Address Book, and IP Centrex Group Management. The product set is an open system with an N-tier architecture in production today operating as the service provider’s web portal, or as a part of a service provider’s web portal.

The Strata Group is headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri.

About TeleSciences, Inc.
Founded in 1967, TeleSciences, Inc. has continually provided innovative solutions that gather timely information from networks to help communications service providers, equipment vendors, and end customers. TeleSciences solutions are deployed throughout the world and process billions of events per day for accurate billing, customer self-service, and cost management.

TeleSciences has extensive expertise in fixed, mobile, and cable environments and has a global client base of operators and equipment vendors.

TeleSciences is headquartered in Mount Laurel, New Jersey with other locations in the US, UK, and China and has been ISO 9001:2000 certified since 1996.

About Spire Capital Partners, L.P.
Spire Capital Partners, L.P. is a private equity firm founded in 2000 with more than $350 million of capital under management. Spire partners with exceptional management teams to invest in middle market buyouts, recapitalizations, industry consolidations and growth equity investments in the media, communications, information services and business services industries. Spire typically invests between $15 million and $30 million in companies with enterprise values from $25 million to $250 million. Since its founding, Spire has successfully made investments in approximately 30 portfolio companies. The firm is headquartered in New York.