NetScout Acquires Accanto Systems Assets

**Editor's Note: Please click here for a recap of the industry's biggest M&A from Q2.**

NetScout Systems, a provider of what it calls unified service delivery management solutions reported earnings of $76 million for the first quarter of its fiscal 2013 and will spend some of that on the acquisition of certain assets of Accanto Systems.

NetScout will acquired asset associated with Accanto's intelligent customer services assurance (iCSA) portfolio, including all the Pantera hardware probes, middleware and session analysis applications. This acquisition will extend NetScout's nGenius service assurance solution's extensive control plane and data plane monitoring capabilities for IMS, VoIP and VoLTE as well as incremental support for legacy circuit switched voice (SIGTRAN and SS7).

Anil Singhal, president and CEO of NetScout, said that as voice services remain an essential foundation of service provider offerings, the ability to address both legacy and next generation IP-based voice services has become a pressing requirement for carriers’ service management activities.

“The technology acquired is consistent with our packet-flow strategy and brings important voice service monitoring capabilities that will strengthen our unified service delivery management strategy and accelerate our time to market to support emerging technologies like VoLTE," Singhal said, adding that the acquisition will help NetScout address a broader range of voice assurance requirements for both NGN and legacy deployments for mobile, wireline and cable operators.

Patrick Kelly, research director at Analysys Mason, said the Accanto technology brings broad coverage of all legacy SS7 interfaces, STP/IP monitoring, and multi-protocol correlation in fixed and mobile networks into the NetScout portfolio. “While NetScout has a leading market position in the IP probe monitoring segment, the Accanto assets will add SS7 monitoring and IMS support, further extending their technology lead.

Kelly added that the Accanto technology helps identify poorly performing devices, network quality issues by cell site, and service outages using the Pantera probes and analysis of data records specific to customers and services.

NetScout will bring aboard a team of engineers from Accanto Systems’Modena, Italy location and has consequently established a development center in the Modena region. NetScout now has nine research and development centers globally with four in the U.S., in Massachusetts, California, Virginia and Utah, two in India (Pune and Bangalore) and three in Europe (Ipswich, United Kingdom; Delft, The Netherlands; and Modena, Italy).

NetScout did not assume Accanto Systems’ customer contracts, and current Accanto customer deployments will continue to be supported by Accanto. With this acquisition, Accanto becomes an authorized NetScout reseller of the acquired products (formerly Accanto’s technology) as well as the existing nGenius Service Assurance Solution.

Financial terms of the transaction are undisclosed. Under terms of the definitive agreement, the transaction is expected to close this month.