MW13: InfoVista Preps More M&A

NICE, France -- Management World 2013 -- Network and applications performance management specialist InfoVista SA is set to announce the latest chapter in its Service Provider Information Technology (SPIT) acquisition story in the coming weeks, according to chatter on the show floor in Nice.

The OSS company announced the acquisition of Mentum, a mobile radio access network and backhaul network planning and optimization software specialist, in November 2012, noting that the move was part of its "strategy to strengthen its solution set across the network lifecycle and customer experience domains."

That M&A-led strategy, introduced by private equity owner Thoma Bravo, is about to be put into action again, though the company is staying tight-lipped about the move: Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer Bernard Breton says only that it's a technology, rather than a corporate, acquisition, but that fits in with InfoVista's ongoing efforts to provide its service provider customers with information that helps their decision-making processes. (See PE Firm Takes Control of InfoVista.)

That's one of the key messages coming from this show: No longer are OSS tools regarded as, or presented as, software solutions with single functions (such as fault management) used only by geeky network operations teams -- now they are mission-critical tools that can play an important role in marketing, customer relations and corporate strategy as well as network operations.

So don't be surprised if terminology such as "actionable intelligence" crops up when InfoVista announces its next industry purchase.

— Ray Le Maistre, Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading