Extreme Networks to acquire Infovista's SD-WAN division for $73M

Extreme Networks intends to acquire Ipanema, Infovista's SD-WAN division, in an all-cash deal valued at nearly $73 million. Ipanema, also referred to as Ipanematech SAS, will likely be incorporated into Extreme's ExtremeCloud Portfolio, which provides cloud-managed SD-WAN and security services to enterprise customers.

Ipanema is a privately held company, with the majority owned by private equity firm Apax Partners and a minority stake owned by Thoma Bravo. The acquisition is expected to close in October 2021, and Moelis & Company LLC is acting as a strategic financial advisor for Extreme Networks.

Ipanema's SD-WAN service automatically adjusts traffic flows as needed to improve network performance, and includes cloud-managed application visibility and control, which are among the features Extreme plans to fold into its ExtremeCloud Portfolio.

"By building upon Ipanema's innovation and performance, we'll be able to provide customers more flexible and secure cloud-managed solutions to connect locations, people, applications, services, and devices with even greater speed and finesse," said Nabil Bukhari, CTO for Extreme Networks, in a statement.

Extreme is also set to benefit from recent updates Infovista made to Ipanema's SD-WAN service. In June, Infovista updated the Ipanema SD-WAN platform in collaboration with CheckPoint and Equinix, in an effort to turn Ipanema into a full, cloud-native SD-WAN platform.

"With this launch, we shift SD-WAN to a truly on-demand service that can be deployed, consumed, and scaled like any other cloud service," Kristian Thyregod, president of global enterprise at Infovista, told Light Reading contributor Anne Morris. "Throughout 2020, companies and organizations had to rethink their networks to be able to secure acceptable levels of business continuity ... the need for continuous flexibility, agility and security rose to the top of the list when connecting people, applications, services and locations in sometimes entirely different ways than business as usual."

Extreme says the addition of Ipanema will establish a second technology center of excellence for Extreme in Europe, expanding its European customer footprint. Extreme could also benefit from Ipanema's existing partnerships with managed services providers and systems integrators in the region. Ipanema's SD-WAN services are deployed in over 100,000 sites to about 400 customers – BT and Orange Business Services are among Ipanema's European SD-WAN customers.

"Tapping into the fast-growing and developing market segments of cloud-managed SD-WAN, and, in the future SASE, accelerates our topline growth potential and expands our opportunity to grow recurring revenue with additional SaaS applications," said Ed Meyercord, president and CEO for Extreme Networks, in a statement. "Further, we'll extend our go-to-market and R&D footprint in Europe, where Ipanema is an established player."

The SD-WAN market, one of the fastest growing segments of the network infrastructure market, grew by 18.5% in 2020 to $3 billion worldwide, according to a May report by IDC. The Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) regions amount to nearly 30% of the SD-WAN market. In addition, IDC expects the SD-WAN market to grow nearly 19% per year through 2025.

— Kelsey Kusterer Ziser, Senior Editor, Light Reading