Storage and networking vendor Brocade is riding the wave of carrier interest in NFV (Network Functions Virtualization) to enhance its standing with mobile operators, and has announced the acquisition of Vistapointe to assist in this process.
The larger firm has acquired the technology assets and staff of Vistapointe, a network visibility and analytics firm whose software-only and virtualized tools, Brocade says, offer a more modern and flexible approach than traditional probes and analytics products. The software helps carriers to classify, visualize, manage, and secure subscriber data traffic and enhance service delivery in an virtualized environment.
Jason Nolet, VP of Brocade’s switching routing and analytics division, told LightReading: “There’s an entire group of companies like Ixia, Gigamon Systems, NetScout Systems and others that are dependent upon a high revenue model of selling purpose-built boutique solutions into this space.” By contrast, Vistapointe has a software-only approach though this will now be tied to Brocade’s MLX router, which acts as a broker for IP packets. “The analytics applications on top of the packet broker will create an end-to-end solution,” added Nolet.
This indicates how router makers are trying to protect their products from full commoditization by running key functions on them as virtual machines, though operators may react badly if this software becomes restricted to one vendor’s network hardware.