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 Chesterfield is a city in St. Louis County, Missouri, United States. It is a western suburb of St. Louis. As of the 2020 census, the population was 49,999, making it the state's 14th most populous city. The broader valley of Chesterfield was ...

. 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 The Nasdaq Stock Market (; National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...

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 St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an Independent city (United States), independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Miss ...

, 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

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 Golden Pages is a company which publishes a telephone directory of businesses categorized according to product or service. Business listings are printed on yellow paper as opposed to white paper for non-commercial and private phone numbers. Gold ...

, which was owned by the

Aurec Group Aurec Group (from Latin: Aurum - gold, or from Hebrew: עורק - artery), is an Israeli holding company that includes cable and telecom investments. It was established in 1968 by Morris Kahn. History Aurec Group was founded by Morris Kahn, who ...

headed by

Morris Kahn Morris Kahn (; born 5 March 1930) is an Israeli billionaire entrepreneur. He is the founder of Golden Pages Israel, Amdocs, the Aurec Group, Coral World and other companies. Through Coral World, he founded several marine parks around the world ...

. 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 AT&T Inc., an abbreviation for its predecessor's former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the w ...

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 Customer relationship management (CRM) is a strategic process that organizations use to manage, analyze, and improve their interactions with customers. By leveraging data-driven insights, CRM helps businesses optimize communication, enhance cus ...

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 Cramer Systems Group Ltd. is a British telecommunications firm, founded in 1996 by Jon Craton, Mark Farmer and Don Gibson. The firm developed Operations support systems (OSSs) for the telecommunication industry clients such as Vodafone, KPN, KP ...

Sigvalue SigValue Technologies Ltd. is a provider of Telecommunications billing software for the prepaid market; owned by Amdocs. History SigValue (2000-2016) was founded in Hod Hasharon, Israel in April 2000, by Yuval Mayron and Eli Yardeni. The co ...

, and Canadian internet billing firm Solect. 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 A private investigator (often abbreviated to PI; also known as a private detective, an inquiry agent or informally a wikt:private eye, private eye) is a person who can be hired by individuals or groups to undertake investigatory law services. ...

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 Business support systems (BSS) are the components that a telecommunications service provider (or telco) uses to run its business operations towards customers. Together with operations support systems (OSS), they are used to support various end-to ...

portion of

Comverse Technology Comverse Technology, Inc. was a technology company located in Woodbury, New York in the United States, that developed and marketed telecommunications software. The company focused on providing value-added services to telecommunication service p ...

, and content monetization, processing and distribution software company

Vubiquity Vubiquity, Inc. is a Burbank, California-based provider of content monetization, distribution and processing technology used by entertainment and media companies. The company ensures its client's video content is properly formatted, licensed and ...

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 Generative artificial intelligence (Generative AI, GenAI, or GAI) is a subfield of artificial intelligence that uses generative models to produce text, images, videos, or other forms of data. These models learn the underlying patterns and str ...

framework in 2023 called amAIz, designed for telecommunications service providers and built using

Nvidia Nvidia Corporation ( ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang (president and CEO), Chris Malachowsky, and Curti ...

's AI foundry service, which runs on

Microsoft Azure Microsoft Azure, or just Azure ( /ˈæʒər, ˈeɪʒər/ ''AZH-ər, AY-zhər'', UK also /ˈæzjʊər, ˈeɪzjʊər/ ''AZ-ure, AY-zure''), is the cloud computing platform developed by Microsoft. It has management, access and development of ...

. The company has experimented with using the platform to process customer service inquiries. In 2023, Amdocs also acquired Astadia and Teoco.

References

External links