For the third time in less than a year, Intel has sold off one of its smaller divisions to a privately owned company.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip making giant this week said it’s letting go of Trillium Digital Systems, which it purchased in August 2000 for $300 million, to Continuous Computing (CCPU) for an undisclosed amount.
The acquisition includes Trillium branded portable software products such as Trillium protocol stacks for the IP telephony, wireless, broadband and signaling markets, Trillium Advanced Portable Architecture (TAPA) and certain associated intellectual property rights.
Trillium’s software is developed in ISO 9001 certified and registered facilities and is currently in use in more than 500 projects by wireless, broadband, Internet and telephony product suppliers.
San Diego-based CCPU, which specializes in telecom applications, said it will expand its middleware products with Trillium’s protocols such as H.323, MGCP, SIP, GPRS, IMT-2000, SS7 and SIGTRAN. The company said it will then turn around and use the technology to deliver source code, bundled software and hardware, and turnkey central office systems for network equipment providers including customers such as Alcatel, Cisco, Ericsson, Spatial Wireless and Tellabs.
“The Trillium software base supports millions of active users. Our technology complements and enhances this source code model. Combined, CCPU and Trillium will help customers get their applications to market quickly and cost effectively on their choice of open architectures,” CCPU CEO Ken Kalb said in a statement.
As part of the agreement, CCPU said it will hire some of Intel’s Los Angeles-based engineers and members of its worldwide sales and support organization. After the deal closes, CCPU said it will also maintain the Trillium business model of licensing source code and provide maintenance and support to new and existing customers.
This is the third recent Intel sale of assets. The first being Ziatech, which was acquired by Intel for $240 million in 2000 and sold for $3.8 million in September 2002 and Shiva, which Intel bought for $182 million in 1998 and sold in November 2002 to Simple Assets.
