NetScout Systems announced the acquisition of privately held ONPATH Technologies.

Based in Marlton, New Jersey, ONPATH is an established provider of scalable monitoring connectivity solutions for high-performance networks that aggregate and distribute network traffic for data, voice, and video testing, monitoring, performance management, and CyberSecurity deployments.

The acquisition of ONPATH is a strategic move by NetScout to aggressively expand its leadership position in the network monitoring switch market. The acquisition builds on the successful acquisition and integration of Simena in November, 2011 and will accelerate time-to-market for industry-leading ultra low latency and high density network monitoring switch solutions.

The ONPATH acquisition brings high-density modular network monitoring switch products with an advanced centralized management system that allows simple point-and-click provisioning and secure control of large network monitoring switch deployments.

NetScout will leverage ONPATH’s next generation technology to deliver an extensible modular chassis-based switching product portfolio supporting more than 500 ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) per chassis along with market-leading densities for 40 GbE, and future support for 100 GbE interfaces.

This acquisition further strengthens NetScout’s Unified Service Delivery Management strategy by enabling ubiquitous and scalable access to all relevant network traffic across highly distributed network environments for use by any network monitoring, performance management and security system, including NetScout’s own nGenius® Service Assurance Solution.

“As enterprise and service provider organizations continue to face the challenges of monitoring large, distributed and high volume IP network environments, they need greater density and flexibility to scale their access to packet-flow intelligence,” said Anil Singhal, president and CEO, NetScout. “Our acquisition of ONPATH significantly extends NetScout’s network monitoring switch position and will enable us to establish ourselves as the technology leader in this segment. We intend to quickly integrate this technology into our packet flow switch product offering to deliver a comprehensive, ultra low latency switch portfolio with industry-leading performance and port densities that will be easier to integrate and simpler to manage. This will enable enterprise and service provider organizations to address a diverse range of deployment requirements to improve the efficiency, control and distribution of valuable network traffic flows and reduce the overall total cost of ownership for network-based monitoring deployments.”

NetScout will maintain ONPATH’s test automation business as a new business unit and will integrate the ONPATH network monitoring switch and system management products into its nGenius Packet Flow Switch family.

Initial switching products resulting from the acquisition are expected to be available for volume shipping in the first calendar quarter of 2013.

About 45 existing ONPATH employees will be integrated into NetScout’s ongoing operations and all existing ONPATH customers will continue to receive support from NetScout.