Bowthorpe launches new company: T&M companies unite as Spirent

Aiming to capitalize on a combined sales force and eventually co-develop test solutions, U.K.-based Bowthorpe last week announced that five leading communications test and measurement companies have combined into Spirent Communications. The new company will continue to provide T&M solutions for service providers, enterprise network providers and lab and telecom equipment manufactures.

U.S.-based AdTech, Netcom Systems and Telecom Analysis Systems; Global Simulation Systems of Devon, England; and DLS TestWorks of Ottawa, Ontario, will make up the new company.

My Chung, group president of Spirent, will organize the companies into two divisions: broadband and network access. Barry Phelps, president of Netcom, will run the broadband division, which will include Netcom and AdTech. The network access division will be run by Neil Knudsen, president of DLS TestWorks, and will include TAS, DLS TestWorks and GSS.

Both divisions will have a combined worldwide sales force.

"The five companies each have their own engineering, development, production and marketing groups," said Mark Fishburn, executive vice president of marketing for Netcom. "They feed product into the worldwide sales [organization], which handles sales and indirect sales."

Spirent has approximately 700 employees and is developing product in eight locations in Canada, France, England and the U.S. The company's sales force spans those same countries and, through partnerships, extends into 40 more countries, Fishburn said.

"They have an interesting initial approach. It's not well integrated yet, but the different companies will eventually fit into one product suite," said Michael Allen, senior analyst for operations support systems at The Aberdeen Group.

Bowthorpe acquired most of the companies now under the Spirent umbrella within the last few years. Bowthorpe purchased Netcom last July, marking its largest acquisition.

"We will, over a period of time, bring out new joint products that have Spirent branding [but] will carry both names," Fishburn said. Netcom's SmartBits are multiport network performance analysis systems that generate and analyze traffic for 10 and 100 gigabit Ethernet, gigabit copper, packet-over-Sonet, ATM, frame relay, cable modem, TCP/IP and other protocols.

"We have a lot of well-known brands within communications. The SmartBits system from Netcom has 70,000 ports of testing equipment out in the marketplace and there is a great deal of AdTech ATM and packet-over-Sonet test equipment," Fishburn said. "So we won't be dropping those product names anytime soon."

AdTech, founded in 1967, manufactures test equipment that measures quality-of-service characteristics of broadband networks and equipment. Its flagship product, the AX/4000 Broadband Test System, generates and analyzes traffic at speeds up to 2.488 Gb/s in real time. AdTech also makes the SX Series Data Simulator, which mimics the error and delay characteristics of land-based and satellite data links.

"We see AdTech and Netcom creating joint solutions for performance and functional testing on the core of OC-48 networks alongside large-scale testing of edge devices," Fishburn said.

Also in the broadband space is DLS TestWorks, which designs and manufactures DSL test equipment according to national and international standards.

GSS focuses on satellite navigation system testing and provides solutions for developers, manufacturers and other evaluators of systems using the global positioning system and the Russian Glonass signaling. TAS covers the access market with test systems for wireless and wireline access equipment. Its system tests the transmission quality of devices, such as PCS and cellular handsets, cable modems, remote access equipment and fax machines, over varied transmission technologies and conditions.

"Solutions that have components from various companies will be coming together in a single new solution," Fishburn said.

"We're not an $8 billion test and measurement start-up company, but we have a strong presence with what we've delivered over last few years," he continued. "We are going to be moving forward and most certainly add more [companies] in the not too distant future."