DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY / JULY 14, 2003; VOL. 2 NO. 28    ( Table of Contents )

Breaking News - Networking:

Ixia Acquires NetIQ's Chariot Product Line

Ixia, a leading provider of high-speed, multiport network performance analysis systems, announced that it has acquired the exclusive U.S. and Canadian distribution rights and a perpetual license to the source code for the Chariot product line from NetIQ Corp. These rights were acquired for $17.5 million, plus royalties on sales of existing Chariot products. Products developed by Ixia based on the Chariot source code will not be subject to royalty payments. Ixia has an option to purchase the remaining assets of the Chariot business after 18 months for $2.5 million.

Chariot is a unique software program that allows users to simulate full-scale enterprise networks with a mixture of traffic types, including VoIP, Multicast, Oracle, and SAP business transactions. Significantly, it enables pre-deployment testing of networks with real-world application loads, and is designed for enterprise IT, hardware and software vendors, as well as service providers.

"With recent sales to large businesses in both the financial and healthcare industries, Ixia is starting to show traction in its enterprise sales effort," commented Errol Ginsberg, CEO of Ixia. "This transaction is the next logical step for Ixia - allowing us to quickly integrate Chariot into our existing product line, and to offer a compelling solution for our enterprise customers, giving us an important technology base for future products."

By fully integrating Chariot into its Real World Traffic() Suite, Ixia will offer an industry first - the ability in a single chassis to simulate full- scale enterprise networks and application-level traffic, combined with wire- speed Layer 2-3 traffic. Prior to this development, enterprises rolling out multi-million dollar networks required hundreds of PCs to simulate application traffic, and additional test tools to generate Layer 2-3 traffic.

Chariot won the "Best of 2002" award from Secure Computing, and Network World hailed it for providing "the most accurate MOS-estimate assessment [when compared to] human interactive ratings under the same set of VoIP and network conditions (Network World, 12/9/02)." Since the initial strategic partnership between NetIQ and Ixia announced on December 16, 2002, Ixia's integrated Real World Traffic() Suite and associated enterprise test products won eWEEK's Third Annual Excellence Award and a Best of Interop Award.

"Ixia's depth and breadth of expertise in network performance testing tools is impressive and Ixia has been a top seller of Chariot for the last six months," said Mark Marron, senior vice president, Worldwide Sales at NetIQ. "We are confident that this relationship will expand market penetration for Ixia and NetIQ in North American enterprises, and provide our mutual customers with a single point of contact for the fullest range of network-based application testing tools available."

Ixia will hire approximately ten employees, primarily in engineering and sales positions, to support this product initiative. The expanded business relationship is expected to be immediately accretive.

"While we have already had success selling Chariot to our core customer base of leading equipment vendors, our enterprise initiative allows us to greatly expand our addressable market," added Mr. Ginsberg. "We expect that sales of the Chariot software, along with other software components of our Real World Traffic() Suite, will accelerate our hardware sales to the enterprise market. Moving forward, we will continue to look at similar opportunities that can help drive future growth while delivering strong margins and solid bottom line profits."