Juniper Networks agreed to acquire Netrounds, which offers a programmable, software-based active test and service assurance platform for fixed and mobile networks. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Netround, which was founded in 2007 and is based in Lulea, Sweden, focuses on lifecycle service assurance. Its vendor-agnostic platform is offered as on-demand as a SaaS solution or on-premise for NFV deployment. Netrounds’ traffic-generating test agents allow OSS and NFV orchestrators to remotely test, monitor, and assure their network service KPIs and SLAs.
Juniper said Netrounds will enhance its automated WAN solutions to further simplify operations for service providers and ensure positive end-user experiences.
“End-user expectations for a consistently high quality of experience for services delivered over IP networks in the cloud era are extremely high, and the onset of 5G will only accelerate this. Service providers are increasingly looking to differentiate themselves by looking beyond offering basic connectivity and focusing on the quality assurance of their services,” said Manoj Leelanivas, chief product officer, Juniper Networks. “Today’s announcement and plan to bring Netrounds into Juniper will fully automate the complexities of testing and actively monitoring those customer service experiences at scale, a crucial step to staying competitive in today’s dynamic market.”
“Today, end users are often the first to discover service quality problems, as traditional assurance solutions primarily focus on passive device health instead of service quality,” said Mats Nordlund, CEO and Co-Founder of Netrounds. “Combined with Juniper Networks’ sophisticated network automation solutions, service and cloud providers are now able to rapidly deliver software-defined network services with guaranteed end-to-end service quality. For our customers, this is a key success factor when rolling out solutions in dynamic environments built on 5G network slicing, Kubernetes, SD-WAN and hybrid-cloud. We are thrilled to be joining Juniper to provide higher levels of automated assurance to complex networks.”
