An affiliate of Procera Networks completed the acquisition of Sandvine, creating what they now describe as the leader in network intelligence, enabling closed-loop automation solutions for service providers and enterprises worldwide.
Private equity firm Francisco Partners announced in July it would spend roughly $444 million to acquire Sandvine, with the intention of combining the company with its own Procera Networks. Sandvine shareholders approved the sale on Sept. 7.
The company says the combined portfolio significantly expands Sandvine's addressable market and enables it to capitalize on the growth opportunities of 5G networks, IoT, software-defined networks and network function virtualization.
Operating under the Sandvine name, the company is led by President and CEO Lyndon Cantor, former CEO of Procera. Sandvine co-founder and CEO Dave Caputo told the Waterloo Region Record earlier this month that he would take on more of a governance role as chairman of the board of the combined companies.
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Waterloo, Ontario-based Sandvine provides network equipment for wireless carriers, cable companies, fixed wireless businesses and other operators to help offer new services and manage network congestion, among other things. Procera, which is based in Fremont, California, sells internet intelligence addressing concerns such as deep packet inspection, policy charging and data analytics, enabling offerings such as parental controls, zero-rated content and real-time network monitoring.
“The new Sandvine has significant scale with over 200 Tier 1 service providers, including 12 of the top 20 mobile carriers and covering over 1.7 billion subscribers, over 500 enterprise customers, and over 40 OEM partners in nearly 100 countries worldwide,” Cantor said in a press release. “This scale will enable us to accelerate our innovation engine and expand our solution and services offerings to better serve our customers’ needs.”
The company’s largest presence will remain in Waterloo, Ontario. Caputo told the Waterloo Region Record that Sandvine is the clear No. 1 player in the space, with Procera being the No. 2 player. “It's taking the top two players and putting them together in the hope that one plus one is greater than three," he told the publication.
Just last week, Sandvine announced that the mobile business of an unnamed converged Tier 1 North American service provider selected Sandvine’s Service Delivery Engine as its fully virtualized Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF). The implementation, to be run on OpenStack, will support millions of mobile subscribers and will represent one of the first fully virtualized PCRFs to be deployed in the North American market at this scale, Sandvine said.
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The implementation will enable the service provider to support end-to-end IMS/VoLTE, including E911 support, and a number of other potential policy use cases were identified to support subscriber services. Sandvine’s said its intuitive SandScript policy language makes for rapid and easy configuration of its PCRF, creating an ideal DevOps environment for implementing multiple new use cases.
The new company plans on accelerating investments in behavioral analysis, automation and cloud solutions. Sandvine says it will have the only “closed loop” capabilities powered by network intelligence, positioning it uniquely to enable its customers to drive OPEX savings with network and workflow transformation.