Amdocs Limited is a multinational

telecommunications Telecommunication, often used in its plural form or abbreviated as telecom, is the transmission of information over a distance using electronic means, typically through cables, radio waves, or other communication technologies. These means of ...

technology company headquartered in Chesterfield, Missouri. The company specializes in software and services for communications, media and financial services providers and digital enterprises. Amdocs was founded in 1982 and is publicly traded on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

Overview

Amdocs provides software and services for communications and media service providers. The company operates in more than 90 countries, with its headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri, and has approximately 30,000 employees globally as of 2022. Shuky Sheffer is the

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

(CEO) and president. Amdocs has been traded on the Nasdaq global select market since December 2013.

History

Early years and IPO

Amdocs was founded in 1982 in

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

as an offshoot of the Israeli phone directory company Golden Pages, which was owned by the Aurec Group headed by Morris Kahn. Together with others at Golden Pages, Kahn developed a billing software program for phone directory companies and with Boaz Dotan established a company called Aurec Information & Directory Systems to market this product. In 1982, Boaz Dotan became Amdocs' first President and CEO. In 1985, Southwestern Bell Corporation acquired a 50 percent ownership share of Aurec Information & Directory Systems, and its name was changed to Amdocs. Within two years, the Aurec Group sold off all its holdings in Amdocs for almost US$1 billion. Between 1990 and 1995, Amdocs took its initial diversification steps, expanding first into the wireline telephony market and then the mobile space. Avi Naor replaced Dotan in 1995. In June 1998, Amdocs held an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investm ...

on the New York Stock Exchange.

Expansion

Following its IPO, Amdocs expanded by acquiring additional billing and customer relationship management companies and building its application creation capabilities. In 1999, the company moved into managed services when it acquired International Telecommunication Data System Corporation. Companies acquired in the early 2000s include DST Innovis, XACCT Technologies, Cramer Systems, and Sigvalue. Dov Baharav succeeded Naor as CEO in 2002, and Eli Gelman held the role starting in November 2010. In early 2000, federal agencies conducted a counterintelligence investigation to determine if Amdocs was being used by Israel to eavesdrop on U.S. government communications. The investigation found no evidence of such activity. Concerns were also raised about potential mishandling of data. In 2005, Amdocs was suspected of

industrial espionage Industrial espionage, also known as economic espionage, corporate spying, or corporate espionage, is a form of espionage conducted for commercial purposes instead of purely national security. While political espionage is conducted or orchestrat ...

when it hired a private investigator who allegedly spied on a ''Globes'' journalist. In 2009, the South African State Security Agency suspected Amdocs was being used by

Mossad The Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations (), popularly known as Mossad ( , ), is the national intelligence agency of the Israel, State of Israel. It is one of the main entities in the Israeli Intelligence Community, along with M ...

to spy on South African citizens. Amdocs continued to expand via mergers and acquisitions in the 2010s, purchasing firms such as Bridgewater Systems in 2011, the business support system portion of Comverse Technology, and content monetization, processing and distribution software company Vubiquity in 2018. Shuky Sheffer replaced Gelman as Amdocs' President and CEO in October 2018. Amdocs acquired Openet, a provider of 5G charging, policy and cloud technologies, in 2020. Amdocs further expanded into

cloud computing Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to International Organization for ...

in 2021 with the acquisitions of Sourced, a Canadian company specializing in cloud transitioning. Amdocs launched a generative AI framework in 2023 called amAIz, designed for telecommunications service providers and built using Nvidia's AI foundry service, which runs on Microsoft Azure.

Companies acquired

* XACCT Technologies (2003) * DST Innovis (2005) * Qpass (2006) * SigValue (2007) * Jacada (2008) * Bridgewater Systems (2011) * Celcite (2013) * Actix (2013) * Comverse BSS Business (2015) * Vindicia (2016) * Pontis (2016) * Vubiquity (2018) * Openet (2020) * Sourced (2021) * Astadia (2023) (largely downsized within a year due to mismanagement)

References

External links

Official Website
{{Authority control 1982 establishments in Israel Companies listed on the Nasdaq Companies formerly listed on the New York Stock Exchange Companies based in Chesterfield, Missouri Software companies established in 1982 Customer relationship management software companies Software companies based in Missouri Software companies of Israel Private equity portfolio companies Telecommunications billing systems 1982 establishments in Missouri 1998 initial public offerings Software companies of the United States