NETSCOUT Extends Service Provider Voice Services Support with the Acquisition of Technology from Accanto Systems

19 Jul 2012

Broad Legacy and Next Generation Network Voice Capabilities will Significantly Extend the nGenius Service Assurance Solution’s Capabilities for Mobile, Wireline and Cable Operators

WESTFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul. 19, 2012-- NetScout® Systems, Inc. today announced it has acquired technology and assets associated with the intelligent Customer Service Assurance (iCSA) product line from privately held Accanto Systems, S.r.l., a subsidiary of Accanto Systems, OY. Accanto Systems OY, headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, and its subsidiary Accanto Systems, S.r.l. headquartered in Modena, Italy, is an established provider of service assurance products for telecommunications service providers that enable carriers to monitor and manage the delivery of voice services over converged, next-generation telecom architectures. The acquisition of voice assurance technology from Accanto Systems will extend the nGenius Service Assurance Solution’s support for Next Generation Network (NGN) voice services, including Voice over IP (VoIP) and Voice over Long Term Evolution (VoLTE), and enable the addition of support for legacy circuit switched voice environments including Signaling System 7 (SS7) and SIGTRAN.

“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. To meet the ongoing challenges of evolving converged network architectures, service providers need the ability to support data services along with a broad range of voice services in a single, unified IP service management platform,” said Anil Singhal, president and CEO of NetScout. “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. In addition, NetScout will be able to address a broader range of voice assurance requirements for both NGN and legacy deployments for mobile, wireline and cable operators.”

The acquired technology from Accanto Systems’ iCSA product line includes all of the Pantera hardware probes, along with middleware and session analysis applications. The acquired technology will extend the nGenius Service Assurance Solution’s extensive control plane and data plane monitoring capabilities to bolster support for NGN voice services, including IP multimedia subsystems (IMS), and add incremental support for legacy circuit switched voice including SIGTRAN and SS7.

“The Accanto technology brings into the NetScout portfolio broad coverage of all legacy SS7 interfaces, STP/IP monitoring, and multi-protocol correlation in fixed and mobile networks,” said Patrick Kelly, Research Director of Analysys Mason. “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. The Accanto technology helps to 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.”

With the acquisition, an accomplished team of engineers from Accanto Systems’ Modena location will transfer to NetScout, bringing a significant amount of deep technical expertise in both legacy and NGN carrier voice technologies. Consequently, NetScout has established a development center in the Modena region of Italy. NetScout now has nine research and development centers globally with four in the United States (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 in July 2012. For the remainder of the fiscal year 2013, the acquisition is expected to be earnings per share neutral on a non-GAAP basis and to be slightly dilutive on a GAAP basis. It is expected to be accretive on a non-GAAP and GAAP basis for the fiscal year 2014 and beyond.

About NetScout Systems, Inc.

NetScout Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTCT) is the market leader in Unified Service Delivery Management enabling comprehensive end-to-end network and application assurance. For 27 years, NetScout has delivered breakthrough packet-flow technology that provides trusted and comprehensive real-time network and application performance intelligence enabling unified assurance of the network, applications and users. These solutions enable IT staff to predict, preempt and resolve network and service delivery problems while facilitating the optimization and capacity planning of the network infrastructure. NetScout nGenius® and Sniffer® solutions are deployed at more than 20,000 of the world’s largest enterprises, government agencies, and more than 148 service providers, on over one million network segments to assure the network, applications, and service delivery to their users and customers. More information about NetScout is available at http://www.netscout.com.

Forward Looking Statements

Forward-looking statements in this release are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and other federal securities laws. Investors are cautioned that statements in this press release, which are not strictly historical statements, including without limitation, the statement that the acquisition is expected to not have a significant impact on earnings per share in fiscal 2013, and to be accretive in fiscal 2014 and beyond, on both a GAAP and non-GAAP basis constitute forward-looking statements which involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ include, without limitation, risks and uncertainties associated with slowdowns or downturns in economic conditions generally and in the market for advanced network and service assurance solutions specifically, the Company’s relationships with strategic partners, dependence upon broad-based acceptance of the Company’s network performance management solutions, the Company’s ability to achieve and maintain a high rate of growth, introduction and market acceptance of new products and product enhancements, the ability of the Company to take advantage of service provider opportunities, competitive pricing pressures, reliance on sole source suppliers, successful expansion and management of direct and indirect distribution channels and dependence on proprietary technology and the ability of NetScout to successfully integrate Psytechnics, FoxReplay, Simena and the acquired Accanto Systems Technology and achieve operational efficiencies. For a more detailed description of the risk factors associated with the Company, please refer to the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2012 on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. NetScout assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking information contained in this press release or with respect to the announcements described herein.

NetScout, nGenius, InfiniStream and Sniffer are registered trademarks of NetScout Systems, Inc.

Source: NetScout Systems, Inc.

Davies Murphy Group, Inc.
Doug Broad, 781-418-2415
netscout@daviesmurphy.com