Quallaby’s Proviso product line is said to eliminate the guesswork in writing service level agreements. The acquisition will help round out the Micromuse portfolio for business service management of real-time and operational systems, particularly those deployed by wireline, wireless, broadband, cable and managed service providers.
Data in Proviso system can be used and re-used so all the components of the provisioning, billing and fault management operational support system share the same information. The system can collate network and performance data with customer information and the services and service levels deployed, to run reports showing the impact on network operations, subscribers and business services.
Headquartered in Lowell, Massachusetts, privately-held Quallaby reportedly has revenues of $3.4m, and overseas sales offices in the UK, Germany, France and Singapore. Since it was founded in France in 1995 Quallaby has had more than $50m in funding from HarbourVest Partners, North Bridge Venture Partners, and Partech International amongst others.
Micromuse is no stranger to acquisitions as a source of niche technology. In 2000, it bought Calvin Alexander Networking to push along its development of auto-discovery technology at the IP Layer 3, and then took over NetOps, for its MIB (Management Information Base for use with IP network management protocols) analysis and correlation product. In 2002, it acquired RiverSoft plc and Lumos Technologies Inc to deepen the auto-discovery, topology modelling, and root cause analysis capabilities at Layers 1 and 2 of the network infrastructure.
The company said that this latest deal should close in about six weeks, and will be neutral to 2005 earnings although it is expected to benefit next year’s results.
