IBM said it will acquire
privately held wireless network performance monitoring company Vallent,
pending regulatory approvals. IBM would not disclose financial details of
the deal.
Vallent’s software is used to report problems such as dropped calls and
traffic bottlenecks, and it helps operators improve service quality, prioritize
the correction of outages and identify potential network problems before
they affect end-user experience.
IBM plans to integrate Vallent with the
Tivoli software unit into which it also integrated Micromuse in February.
When the deal closes in the first quarter of 2007, it will give IBM access to technology for
wireless network monitoring that complements the Netcool operational support
system (OSS)
Micromuse.
IBM expects technology from Vallent to help it offer service providers a
way to manage end-to-end services across all manner of networks, including
wireline, wireless, IP and converged fixed and mobile infrastructures.
It will also give IBM a way to help its customers migrate from legacy to
next-generation networks (NGNs).
Don O’Toole, director of strategy for IBM Tivoli, said that IBM realized
that it had to adapt its product portfolio, as fixed and mobile networks
start to converge with voice, data and video content.
“The move to NGN is empowering the role of new services and changing
customer expectations on what sort of services they’re going to get from
both wireline and wireless services,” he told internetnews.com.
“It changes how we look at the OSS in the service provider space.”
He added that being able to provide those services at a high level is “of
paramount importance to those service providers.”
IBM had spruced up its combined Tivoli-Micromuse offering earlier this year
with an improved set of security-management tools.
O’Toole said that Vallent has “patented processes within that software that
distinguish them from other alternatives that we had” in the market.
But O’Toole said that IBM was particularly attracted by Vallent’s customer
base of more than 200 service providers worldwide, as well as extensive
business partner networks.
“They have an ecosystem we can leverage, and that’s really key to us,” he
said. “It’s one of the important reasons we chose Vallent.”
The deal also helps IBM catch up with other software vendors who have been
more aggressive in this area, said Richard Ptak, principal analyst with
Ptak, Noel & Associates.
“They’ve needed the capability to manage mobile and wireless technologies,”
he said. “They could have been better positioned if they moved more
quickly.”
But while IBM’s move puts the emphasis on infrastructure, Ptak noted that HP
has been aggressively addressing the market with a
wide variety of content — as well as infrastructure-based offerings.
“HP could have the jump on IBM in that it has put together a very
comprehensive strategy aimed at not just management of the services and
infrastructure but also addressing the content that will flow through that
infrastructure. HP discusses not just the service management but content as
well,” he said.
Other competitors include Sun
, Oracle
and BEA
.
O’Toole noted that he expects the same changes affecting the
telecommunications sector to apply to enterprises more broadly.
“The management challenges of service providers will likely be the same sort
of challenges that enterprises will face in the future,” he said.
