Eye On Network Visibility: Ixia Acquires Anue

Anue is known for its Net Tool Optimizer products, which filter and aggregate network traffic to help engineers gain full network visibility and run tests while minimizing downtime. Anue has said that those capabilities will become more important in large enterprise and service provider data centers running hefty applications in the cloud.

Anue was founded in 2002 and is based in Austin, Texas. Its 2011 revenue was $40.5 million, according to the company. Among other recent executive moves, Anue hired Larry Hart, former senior director of networking solutions at Dell, as its vice president of marketing and strategy.

[Related: Eye On IPO: 10 Networking and Infrastructure Companies to Watch ]

The acquisition gets Ixia a foothold in the network visibility market, which by several analyst estimates is growing between 25 percent and 30 percent per year. Both Ixia and Anue have substantial reseller channel programs.

"Next-generation cloud providers, mobility operators and enterprises all require network and traffic visibility to maintain quality of service across application and service delivery," Ixia CEO Vic Alston said in a statement. "Anue's Optimizer solutions provide customers with a measurable value regarding performance, scale and resiliency of networks, while enabling the creation of a next-generation platform for quality of service delivery across live networks."

Ixia has bought several companies in the past few years. Its last major acquisition in June 2011 was of fellow network testing vendor VeriWave, which specializes in wireless LAN and Wi-Fi enabled devices.

Ixia reported $308.4 million in revenue for its fiscal 2011, up 11 percent from $276.8 million a year earlier.