Vocaltec Communications, a provider of multimedia and voice-over-IP solutions for communication service providers, has acquired substantially all of the assets of Outsmart, a provider of telecommunications convergence solutions.

The Outsmart assets acquired by Vocaltec includes Outsmart’s technology and intellectual property, as well as its primary customer and partner contracts.

Vocaltec plans to engage certain Outsmart personnel in a bid to enable the development and support and an uninterrupted transition to all Outsmart customers and partners.

The company believes the combined portfolio will position Vocaltec as a provider of VoIP solution and applications to both fixed line and mobile service providers.

Ericsson has completed its acquisition of substantially all of Nortel’s CDMA business and LTE assets in North America.

The acquisition includes the transfer of important CDMA contracts with North American operators including Verizon, Sprint, US Cellular, Bell Canada, Telus and Leap, as well as LTE assets, certain patents and patent licences relating to CDMA and LTE.

The former Nortel staff will be integrated into the Ericsson group over the coming months and the entity will work under the Ericsson brand.

In terms of sales, North America will now be Ericsson’s largest region.

In addition to the people Ericsson gains through the combination, the company also hopes to benefit from knowledge of Nortel’s CDMA customers and their networks.

Motorola has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Bitband, a provider of content management and delivery systems, specialising in video-on-demand for IPTV.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The acquisition, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close in Q4 2009. Bitband will be integrated into Motorola’s Home & Networks Mobility business.

Based in Netanya, Israel, Bitband is understood to have over 60 commercial IPTV deployments worldwide, including TELE2 (Holland), Fastweb (Italy), and Swyazinvest (Russia).

Motorola believes the acquisition will complement its existing on demand product line that includes the Adaptive Media Management framework for content management and streaming servers for centralised and edge-based on demand networks.

Skype Technologies and an investor group led by Silver Lake have signed a definitive agreement in which the investor group will purchase a 65 per cent interest in Skype Technologies from eBay for approximately $1.9bn in cash, in a transaction valuing Skype Technologies at $2.75 bn. eBay will retain the remaining 35 per cent equity interest in Skype.

Skype is the manufacturer and developer of Skype software, which is used by individuals and businesses to make free video and voice calls, send instant messages and share files with other Skype users. The software also allows users to make calls to landlines and mobile telephone lines.

It is understood that JP Morgan, Barclays and RBC Capital Markets advised Silver Lake and its investor group and will provide the financing necessary to complete the transaction.

EMC, a player in information infrastructure solutions, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Kazeon Systems, an eDiscovery software provider for corporations, legal service providers, government entities and law firms.

The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2009, subject to customary closing conditions.

EMC believes the acquisition with help the company to offer end-to-end, in-house eDiscovery and litigation readiness solutions as part of the EMC SourceOne family for integrated but modular eDiscovery, archiving and compliance.

Kazeon allows organisations to identify, preserve, collect, process, analyse and review information in accordance with the  EDRM (Electronic Discovery Reference Model) framework. Core to Kazeon is its ability to handle Electronically Stored Information (ESI) that resides anywhere in the enterprise environment — including content on laptops, desktops, content management repositories (including, EMC Documentum), Microsoft SharePoint and Exchange, Lotus Domino, e-mail archives and file shares.

EMC also believes the acquisition will strengthen the company’s SourceOne portfolio. EMC SourceOne is an integrated family of products and solutions for eDiscovery, archiving and compliance.

Vimicro, a multimedia semiconductor and solution provider, has announced that Vimicro Tianjin, a joint venture company operated and managed by Vimicro, entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Video Surveillance System (ViSS) from Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell (ASB).

Vimicro Tianjin will acquire the complete ViSS business including all property, plant and equipment, inventories, business contracts, intellectual property and service and development capabilities in China. Moreover, Vimicro and ASB will continue the cooperation on solution and marketing developments in the future.

ViSS is a security and surveillance solution addressing the needs of telecom operators and local governments in China.

The acquisition is expected to be closed in September this year.

The Orange France Telecom Group has acquired 100 per cent of Unanimis, an exclusive digital advertising network in the UK.

Unanimis has exclusive online advertising relationships with key website brands such as the AA, Ticketmaster, ASOS, Gumtree and Shopping.com.

Orange believes together, Orange and Unanimis will have particular strength in the area of online advertising.

The company also claims the combined ad sales network will create a reach of over 70 per cent of internet users in the UK, extending to over 66 per cent reach cumulated across UK, France, Spain and Poland.

Unanimis will continue to operate under its brand name and will become part of the Orange Group Advertising Network, which offers advertisers and publishers an opportunity to reach new audiences by leveraging Orange’s multi-screen assets across the PC, mobile and TV platforms.

Neusoft, an IT solutions & services company in China, has signed an agreement with the Finnish software company Sesca Group  under which Neusoft will acquire Sesca’s mobile phone software development and testing business operations in Finland and Romania.

According to the agreement, Sesca’s subsidiaries, Sesca Mobile Software, Almitas and Romania-based Sesca Technologies will be integrated into Neusoft global mobile solution business unit and will employ nearly 250 employees in Europe.

The acquisition is subject to regulatory approvals in China and is expected to close during autumn 2009. The value of the acquisition has not been disclosed.

MySpace has announced an agreement to acquire iLike, a social music discovery service.

Brothers Ali and Hadi Partovi founded iLike in 2006.

The entire iLike team will stay intact including, CEO Ali Partovi, President Hadi Partovi and CTO Nat Brown.

MySpace noted that all three are seasoned entrepreneurs who havrve held executive positions at both start-ups and Fortune 100 companies. Prior to iLike, Ali Partovi founded and sold LinkExchange to Microsoft and Hadi Partovi independently co-founded and sold TellMe Networks, also to Microsoft.

Hadi Partovi also incubated Start.com (now Live.com). Brown has a history as an early architect at Microsoft, and he was involved in the creation the first Xbox, .NET/CLR, and ActiveX/COM/OLE.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.

Neural Technologies, a provider of risk management software solutions, and Fico, a provider of analytics and decision management technology, have announced that Neural Technologies has acquired a key asset from Fico, the Liquid Credit for Telecom solution.

Current customers for Fico’s Liquid Credit for Telecom solution will experience a transition of their current services and agreement to Neural Technologies.

Further, Neural has offered employment to Fico’s 16 telecom division employees who support this solution, who are primarily located in Norcross, Georgia.

Neural believes this acquisition will add strength to its portfolio of risk management products. The Liquid Credit for Telecom solution is a web-based instant credit decisioning solution.