NFV and Ethernet M&A: ADVA Buys Overture

The rapidly evolving worlds of NFV and Ethernet saw some interesting consolidation this morning. ADVA Optical Networking has announced the acquisition of Overture. The combined company will take over the number one slot in the Ethernet access device marketplace and unify two NFV approaches.

The German-based ADVA and the American-based Overture have each put a lot of effort into Carrier Ethernet access gear.  Overture’s Ethernet-over-copper solution, programmable white-box NID, virtualized NID, and rapidly emerging NFV orchestration ecosystem seem highly complementary to ADVA’s FSP 150 product family.  The result should be a pretty comprehensive solution that also happens to boost ADVA’s penetration in US markets.

The deal is reminiscent of 2015’s purchase of Cyan by Ciena, with an optical vendor with ambitions at higher layers of the network acquires an existing access player there  that has been pushing a multi-vendor orchestration ecosystem.  Where a merger of the two on the basis of hardware would not have happened as easily, the growing importance of NFV and the ecosystems that are developing around it makes a very convincing case for combination.

No financial terms were disclosed.  Last year, ADVA made a smaller, more focused technology acquisition, buying Oscilloquartz.  A few years back, Overture merged with Hatteras Networks, which is where the EoC access component came from originally.

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Categories: Ethernet · Mergers and Acquisitions · NFV · Telecom Equipment