QUEBEC CITY — Telecom testing and monitoring solutions provider EXFO Inc. announced today it has signed service assurance contracts with five new customers, including a previously announced agreement with Irish telecom service provider Eircom Limited (which operates under the name “eir”).
For four of the customer orders, EXFO is providing its portfolio of Nova solutions, which deliver core-to-radio access network monitoring (RAN) and optimization, including 5G capabilities, active and passive probes, subscriber experience metrics, and analytics. In the fifth deal, a multi-country customer will use EXFO’s Nova Context network topology software for network inventory management purposes.
These multi-year, multi-million-dollar deals are expected to contribute approximately US$5 million to EXFO’s bookings in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020, says the news release.
“We’re pleased to add five new mobile network operators within a single quarter to our established customer base benefiting from Nova service assurance solutions,” said Philippe Morin, EXFO’s CEO, in the release. “These contract wins, which will bolster our SASS [service assurance, systems and services] backlog for fiscal 2021, represent strong proof points that our recently launched Nova Adaptive Service Assurance vision is resonating strongly with customers. Given heightened demand for remote, centralized monitoring solutions in this new environment, Nova Adaptive Service Assurance’s capabilities allow mobile operators to automate critical functions, thus significantly reducing time to detect and resolve network issues without the presence of staff on-site at network operations and service operations centres.”
EXFO also announced today it has undertaken a restructuring initiative to strengthen its market focus on high-growth drivers such as fibre, 5G and cloud-native deployments, while mitigating the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on its business operations.
Under this plan, restructuring charges of approximately US$3 million will be incurred mostly in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020 and are expected to generate US$5 million in annual cost savings. The company did not announce if this will include layoffs.
“Although we had to make difficult decisions, it was necessary to re-align our resources toward rapidly expanding verticals, while reducing investments in lower-growth areas,” added Morin. “Profitable growth remains the cornerstone of our long-term strategy despite the pandemic.”
