In light of Allot (News - Alert) Communications’ recent acquisition of Esphion, we thought it might be a good idea to check in with Azi Ronen, Allot’s EVP of Corporate Development. Mr. Ronen gave us some of his time, as well as valuable insight on several important matters pertaining to his company and its new Service Gateway (News - Alert).
What led to Allot’s acquisition of Esphion in the first place?
Announced in June 2007, Allot Communications’ Service Gateway represents the first DPI solution to combine the primary DPI benefit – application and user awareness, leading to improved bandwidth utilization and quality of service – with a variety of value-added services like security.
When we announced the Service Gateway, we noted that there were several business models – including business partnerships, reseller agreements and acquisitions – through which we would incorporate these value-added services. We began looking at application areas based on the order of priority we were hearing from our customers, and the idea of an integrated DPI/security solution – enabling the efficient, secure delivery of Internet services – was particularly compelling. Eventually, security rose so high up on the list of priorities that we didn’t want to just offer Esphion solutions as part of the Service Gateway – we wanted to actually own the solutions, which was the primary reason behind our acquisition.
What does this mean for the company? For its customers?
For our company, the Esphion acquisition represents an exciting culmination of our Service Gateway roadmap. For the first part of 2007, we were focused on getting the solution to market; then, we were focused on customer trials; now, we are focusing on incorporating value-added services. With our acquisition of Esphion, we add to our DPI solutions portfolio the ability to detect the root cause of security attacks with extreme accuracy and to neutralize their effect on network availability and performance.
For our customers, the news means that they will be able to build highly efficient, intelligent and secure networks with great simplicity – leveraging a fully integrated, industry-leading solution from a single vendor. Esphion and Allot have several service provider customers in common, and in fact, Allot customers expressed a tremendous amount of support and enthusiasm for integrating the Esphion security solution with Allot’s bandwidth management offerings.
Would you explain Allot’s Service Gateway vision?
The vision of the Service Gateway is that of a single, integrated DPI engine enabling service providers to achieve faster, more seamless deployment of new revenue-generating services. Newer, more complex forms of Internet traffic are not only bandwidth-intensive, but they require additional services to ensure reliable, high-quality delivery, including traffic prioritization and Quality of Service (QoS) optimization, filtering (including parental control) and blocking security threats. Allot’s Service Gateway is designed to overcome the significant challenges that Tier-1 and Tier-2 service providers currently face when interfacing and integrating with a multitude of proprietary vendor equipment all using different standards, different interfaces, and different policy management systems. Within the Service Gateway, the application and subscriber information for each traffic flow is identified by a single DPI process that can then dispatch the flow to an array of additional services and actions.
How will this benefit that vision?
Today, more service providers are seeing increased value in having a single device managing their application and subscriber visibility, management and control. The integration of Esphion solutions into the Service Gateway is a clear example of a solution engineered to meet this growing market need.
The integrated, self-contained solution will allow service providers to extend Allot’s traditional DPI capabilities and policy-based Quality of Service enforcement with mitigation of security threats. The result is a highly competitive security solution for the service provider market in terms of performance, efficiency, ease of implementation and accuracy.
What will be the biggest challenge Allot will face in the aftermath of this acquisition?
We expect the biggest challenge to be leveraging significant new markets for the integrated solution. In reality, we view this as an opportunity – and to this end we will rely heavily on the expertise and global reach of Allot’s worldwide sales organization.
What is the greatest long-term gain?
We view the greatest long-term gain as helping our service provider customers translate the challenges presented by new forms of Internet traffic into strategic, revenue-generating opportunities, through improved quality of service and bandwidth management. Looking out even further, we see Allot’s acquisition of Esphion and the Service Gateway strategy overall as validating our ongoing commitment to supporting the most advanced, complex forms of Internet traffic, both today and tomorrow -- helping to drive the overall industry forward.
Brian Solomon is a Web Editor for TMCnet, covering news in the IP communications, call center and customer relationship management industries. To see more of his articles, please visit Brian Solomon’s columnist page.
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