Juniper has agreed to acquire WANDL, supplier of network planning and design software, for $60 million.
This time last year we saw two network planning and optimisation software providers being sold to hardware vendors: There was Cisco and Cariden in November 2012, Riverbed and Opnet in October 2012. It must be seasonal because WANDL is now being sold to Juniper.
The complexity of IP networks, particularly as MPLS-TE and SDN are being used more, requires a level of intelligence and automation that a vanilla NMS can’t offer. Until the end of last year there were plenty of third-party optimisation solutions that the hardware vendors could partner with. But with Cariden and Opnet being snapped up by the competition, the other hardware vendors are looking to bring this capability in-house themselves.
This leaves only a couple of companies still providing independent planning and optimization solutions including Aria Networks (who has recently being strengthening their partnership with Alcatel-Lucent) and VPI Systems.
The full press release is here.