Riverbed Technology acquired Cace Technologies, adding
packet capture and analysis tools for wireless and wireline networks to its WAN
optimization portfolio, the company said.
The acquisition was announced on Oct. 21 and Riverbed’s
senior executives discussed the deal on its third-quarter results earnings
call.
Riverbed did not give any financial specifics, but Randy Gottfried, Riverbed’s chief financial officer, said the Cace acquisition cost a "modest
amount," of "less than $20 million."
Riverbed paid about $25 million cash for Mazu Networks in
2009. Its Cascade network and application visibility appliance, which benefits
from this acquisition, is based on Mazu technology.
Riverbed plans to retain all 20 of Cace Technologies
employees, said Gottfried. Cace will
be "tucked in" and managed by the Cascade business unit, according to Jerry
Kennelly, Riverbed’s president and chief executive.
Cace’s high-speed packet capture, visualization and
analysis tools will allow Riverbed’s Cascade business unit to expand into the
application-aware network performance management market, said Kennelly on the
call. It was an area "adjacent to WAN optimization," Kennelly said.
The increased interest in cloud computing means companies
need a way to effectively manage the wide area network to find bottlenecks and
performance issues, the company said. Cace’s Shark appliance and Pilot console discover
applications on networks, monitor performance and record traffic for later analysis.
"They make...a DVR-type functionality called Packet
Capture and Analysis that we needed to add" to compete better in the WAN
performance management market, Kennelly said.
The combination of WAN optimization and network
performance management will further enhance Cascade’s growth, said Kennelly. Cascade
accounted for 5 percent of total product revenue for the third quarter, said Gottfried.
Cace is also the corporate sponsor of the popular Wireshark
and WinPcap open source packet analysis tools. Riverbed said it is committed to
keeping Wireshark open.
"Everyone I’ve talked to at Riverbed from the CEO and CTO
on down is committed to Wireshark and to its community. They realize we have a
good thing going and they want to keep it that way," wrote Gerald Combs, the
analyzer’s original author, on the official Wireshark blog.
"Quite candidly," it’s faster to buy a great product and
add it to the Cascade family, and go after the "adjacent market more completely,"
Kennelly said, adding, "We very much value the Wireshark relationship."
The combination of Cace and Cascade will create a
complete application with network performance monitoring, business mobile
discovery, end-to-end performance monitoring, and the ability to dive deep into
packet-level analysis, positioning Riverbed to compete in the adjacent
application-aware network performance management market, said
Kennelly.
Estimated to be a $3.5 billion market in 2010, the market is "under-penetrated and growing rapidly and we will enter it with a
highly competitive product and the solid team supporting it," said Kennelly.
Riverbed had a strong third quarter, reporting revenues
of $147.8 million, with profits of 34 cents a share, well ahead of the Street
consensus at $135.3 million and 27 cents. Revenues were up 17 percent since the
second quarter, and up 44 percent compared to third quarter of last year. The
company also announced a two-for-one stock split, to be issued Nov. 8 to holders
of record on Nov. 1.
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