Riverbed To Acquire OPNET in $1 Billion Deal

WAN optimization specialist Riverbed Technologies (RVBD) announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire OPNET (OPNT) for $43 per share in cash and stock, or about $1 billion .

OPNET Technologies is an application and network performance management provider and will allow Riverbed to extend its network performance management (NPM) business into the multi-billion application performance management (APM) market. Combined the two product lines will give customers extreme visibility and insight into application and network performance. This acquisition enables Riverbed to provide customers with a unique integrated solution that not only monitors network and application performance, but also accelerates it.

“Riverbed and OPNET have natural synergies,” said Marc Cohen, OPNET’s Chairman and CEO. “Riverbed’s leadership in accelerating business technology combined with OPNET’s industry-leading suite of APM products provides customers with a single solution for monitoring, troubleshooting and actually fixing the application and network performance problems challenging them today.”

OPNET is listed in the leaders quadrant on the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Application Performance Monitoring. The company released second quarter 2013 fiscal results Monday, reporting revenue of $47.1 million. OPNET will join Riverbed’s Cascade business unit, leverage its brand channels and infrastructure, and is expected to see meaningful revenue and operational benefits in 2014. Under the terms of the agreement Riverbed will acquire all of the outstanding shares of OPNET common stock pursuant to an exchange offer, followed by a second step merger.