(Telecompaper) Comverse announced an agreement to acquire Acision, maker of mobile messaging systems for operators and businesses. Comverse will pay USD 135 million cash, 3.13 million of its own shares and up to USD 35 million in earn-out payments for the UK-based company. It will also take over Acision's USD 157 million senior credit facility following completion of the transaction. Both boards have approved the deal, and pending regulatory approval, it should close by the end of September. The merged companies will be led by a team comprised of executives from both organizations, under the leadership of Comverse CEO Philippe Tartavull. The company will remain headquartered in Massachusetts, in the US. The takeover marks a shift in Comverse's business, after it recently agreed to sell its BSS activities to Amdocs. The new company will focus on digital applications for operators and enterprises, including data analytics, secure enterprise application-to-person (A2P) messaging, credit orchestration, two-factor authentication, M2M communication, RCS and WebRTC, and APIs for rapid service creation.