WATERLOO, Ontario—Research In Motion Ltd. announced today it purchased Ascendent Systems, which sells products that extend desk phone connectivity to wireless handsets in a campus environment. RIM said the purchase would complement its current enterprise offerings.
Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Ascendent, a member of the BlackBerry ISV Alliance Program, makes the Ascendent Voice Mobility Suite, a standards-based software solution that augments existing PBX (Private Branch Exchange) and IP-PBX (Internet Protocol Private Branch Exchange) systems. The product extends corporate desk phone functionality to mobile users on their wireless handset or any wireline phone.
Ascendent will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of RIM.
The solution is also SIP-enabled for Voice over Internet Protocol and supports BlackBerry WLAN deployments. Ascendent’s solution is aimed at enterprises with heterogeneous telephony environments and customers that also deploy BlackBerry, according to RIM.
The acquisition comes on the heels of the long-awaited settlement of the patent infringement lawsuit against RIM by NTP, in which RIM agreed to a $612.5 million settlement.
