Full Disclosure: This article is about NetQoS competitors Network General and NetScout. Network Performance Daily is the company blog of NetQoS.
Today, NetScout announced the intent to acquire recently purchased Network General, formerlybest known for its Sniffer packet analysis products, in a deal roughly worth $205M. We believe that this move is primarily a response to our own OEM partnership with Network Instruments and product integration with its GigaStor long-term packet capture products, whereby we provide enterprise-wide views of application performance, highlight when and where problems occur, and then drill down seamlessly into the related packet capture data for forensic and root cause analysis. In fact, we will announce the commercial availability of this first-of-its-kind technology integration next week. A few customers are already using the NetQoS Connector for GigaStor.
Since the acquisition was just announced today, NetScout has a lot of catching up to do.
Here’s what some other people are saying about the deal:
TechTarget: NetScout acquires Network General
This article presents a reasonably good rundown of the deal, with plenty of balanced praise and criticism of the deal and the company near the end of the article.
“Integration of products is never easy, and the performance of both companies has been spotty over the past few years,” [Zeus Kerravala, Yankee Group senior vice president] said. “I’d recommend that customers not invest any more into either company until [the release of] a clear roadmap of how the integration is going to happen.”
For more in-depth analysis, LovemyTool.com presents a very detailed article.
Love My Tool: NetScout Aquired Network General, Will it Blend?
This article asks a serious question – is the NetScout/NG acquisition a sign that the industry is starting to enter a period of consolidation? If so, it’s good for integration, but bad for competition.
However, Ed and I both agree that network managers today do need a broader solution set but with a common interface. The industry is ready for solutions that are tiered and can grow with their need…
In summary, the industry is in need of solutions and not just tools. Managers have way too much to do to have to take a bunch of discrete tools, figure out how to connect them and then deal with a bunch of different user interfaces. The industry needs solutions that can grow as customer networks do, with common user interfaces and state-of-the-art solution-focused technologies.
Finally, there’s Network Instruments – also a direct competitor to Network General, and their take on the news. Ouch, this is likely to sting….
Network Instruments’ Network Observations: Network General: Here we go again.
Both of these companies are among the leaders in their markets, but it seems they’ve lost their way. NG has seen shrinking sales and a patchwork of acquired product offerings that have never truly been integrated – and that was when these technologies were under one roof. Other NG troubles include:…Shrinking corporate value… Management problems…No core competency…
Harsh words. But harsh doesn’t mean untrue – Network General has had its share of problems which made the company acquisition bait – NetScout got the company for a bargain compared to when the company was purchased by McAfee in 1997 for $1.1B, and even as recently as 2003 when it was spun out by private equity firms Silver Lake Partners and Texas Pacific Group for $275M. It’s going to take a while for NetScout to turn the company they acquired around.
In other news…
Hard News: Deriving Satisfaction from the Misfortune of Others
No, it’s not about Network General. Russell Brown talks a little about politics and a lot about the fact that New Zealand’s time zone changes a week earlier than usual this year, and Apple’s Macintosh computers don’t automatically recognize the changeover.
At 2.00am on Sunday September 30, New Zealand Daylight Saving Time will begin — a week earlier than has previously been the case. And therein lies the problem. It’s looking very much like Macs won’t be there.
Although a patch to take account of the new date has been filed as a feature request with Apple for at least six months, Cupertino has given no sign it recognises the deadline.
Apple could still post the MacOS X 10.4.11 update, which contains the new rules (as do the test builds of 10.5, aka Leopard), but there’s no sign that will appear before Sunday week. Even if it does, that doesn’t give users a lot of time to act — and it’s no use at all to the people still running 10.3.x versions.
So what happens if 2am Sunday week arrives without a patch? In most cases it will probably simply be an irritation. Rather than setting a time zone, you’ll have to manually adjust the time on your computer. As a result, the computer will miscalculate current times for everywhere else in the world; email you send will misreport the time; and timestamps on files will be out by an hour even after you are able to eventually set the proper time zone. But there may be more serious impacts on the kind of non-consumer applications where Apple should be looking to emphasise its credibility.
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