CA Inc is to pay $200 million in cash for network performance monitoring supplier NetQoS Inc taking control of software that ensures applications and networks operate effectively and deliver consistently high application service quality to end users.
NetQoS software is used by network professionals to determine how and where to optimise network resources, by helping them detect bottlenecks and identify where a problem is and if it is with the network, with a server or with an application.
CA said the combination of existing assets in the area, namely eHealth Network Performance Manager and Spectrum Infrastructure Manager, with the NetQoS Performance Center flagship will give network and operations managers better visibility and control of physical and virtual network and systems environments.
After 10 years in business NetQoS had just hit the 1,000 customer mark with its products, and claimed an annual revenue of $56 million in 2008, on the back of a 58% compound annual growth clip over the past five fiscal years.
The founder CEO Joel Trammell will remain with CA, as will the majority of NetQoS’ 250 employees.
The company had just announced the arrival of new anomaly detector features as an aid to analysis of multiple data sources as its software scouts for any changes in network behaviour which could impact application performance or signal a security breach.
Armed with NetQoS, CA has positioned itself well in the increasingly important application delivery network space, where vendors like Cisco, Riverbed and BlueCoat already compete for market share.
Businesses are busy consolidating and virtualising data servers and storage systems and centralising applications for reasons of control, compliance and cost. They are also moving to SaaS and putting more applications out into the cloud. Both steps effectively are moving resources further away from application end-users.
Application delivery network technology is proposed as being one of the best ways of dealing with the issues, with a blended base of WAN optimisation and application acceleration.
CA said that the NetQoS acquisition builds on what it started with the takeover of Cassatt earlier this year, which alongside its own CA Spectrum Automation Manager allows for dynamic performance-based automation of physical, virtual and cloud computing environments.
