A British Columbia-based maker of deep packet software solutions used by enterprise security appliance manufacturers has been bought by a U.S. maker of DPI products for mobile and service providers.
Vineyard Networks of Kelowna, whose NAVL engine is used in products from Sophos, Riverbed Technology and others, is being bought by Procera Networks Inc., the companies said Monday.
The deal, which values privately-held Vineyard at $26.5 million, is expected to be finalized this week.
Vineyard’s co-founders will join Fremont, Calif.-based Procera: Jason Richards (former CEO), will become SVP of global business development; Derek Lownsbrough (former VP engineering) will become VP research and development; and Josh Ziesk (former VP technical operations) will head quality assurance.
Vineyard has a staff of 34, of which 25 are in R&D. Procera CEO James Brear (pictured above) told financial analysts that the deal will almost double his company’s research team, which is based in Sweden.
The goal, Brear said, is to merge Procera’s PacketLogic solutions with NAVL over the next year or so to offer DPI to both service providers and enterprises.
Deep packet inspection filters data packets for malware, but it also enables data mining.
DPI of some sort is offered by a wide range of network and security manufacturers who either develop the solution in-house or buy it from software developers like Vineyard and add it to their gateways, routers, Wi-Fi access points and other gear.
With network security constantly on the minds of CIOs and IT managers (not to mention customers), Brear believes DPI “is at a turning point.” It will be demanded by enterprise IT manufacturers offering security, network monitoring, enterprise and carrier Wi-Fi products.
The addition of Vineyard will also allow Procera to have a foot in the big data and software-defined network (SDN) markets as well, Brear said.
Procera (Nasdaq: PKT) has 23 Tier 1 service provider and 30 mobile operator customers. Customers who embed Vineyard technology in their products include AppNeta (cloud-based network performance management), Elfiq Networks, Endace, ISC8, Xirrus (enterprise Wi-Fi) and Blue Coat Systems.
Brear said Vineyard customers will get access to Procera’s signature library and visualization capabilities, while Procera customers get access to new features from Vineyard’s technology.
Vineyard’s competitors include Qosmos of Paris, France.