NetScout just picked up Network General at the auction house for only $205M. Their intention is obvious, lacking in deep packet analysis themselves; they are trying to round out their product offering with a protocol analyzer. On that account, who can blame them? But with what? Network General’s Sniffer software is antiquated. While software and user interface technologies have come a long way, especially in light of Web 2.0, Network General has not had a major release of Sniffer in 7 years. The only real value in this purchase is their market share, and certainly not the technical leadership that customers should require.
While this might look good on paper to some, the problem arises when you realize that the real losers in this game of hot potato are the customers. Network General’s products are not cheap, and in the past NetScout sold a lot of expensive products to big Enterprise IT departments. And even though there are much better and less expensive products on the market, it is still hard to convince upper management to move on, and dump 20 years of investment. However, over time, as Network General has failed to keep up with the needs of the market, their customer base has been forced to supplement their tools with other vendor’s products. This has been necessary because Network General’s products are not extensible.
And this is why the acquisition of Network General by NetScout does not have any synergy. The two products are very different, old, and have no API’s. So how are they going to integrate? It will be hard, and if they do it will take so long, that in the accelerated time-space continuum of the network industry, others will step in and offer their customers better and less expensive solutions. The lack of API’s on both sides also makes it difficult for these products to integrate with other solutions and with each other. And if you read much about the industry today, companies want integrated solutions because they want greater ROI.
So in the end, who really benefits? Hopefully customers will realize that this is merely a fire sale and the cost of restoration is just too high. Rebuilding with open, integrated, and extensible solutions – like those from WildPackets – is far more cost-effective, both now and in the years to come.
