**Editor’s Note: Please click here for a recap of the biggest channel-impacting merger and acquisition news from March.**

LiveAction, an IT network management, visualization and analytics provider, on Friday said it would acquire Savvius, the network performance and diagnostics firm. The vision for the combined company is to create the next-generation network management platform.

LiveAction and Savvius have history, with LiveAction being a Savvius user in the past. The two vendors’ products are also often used by the same customers, primarily in the midmarket and enterprise. Prior to the acquisition, the two vendors discussed partnering.

LiveAction’s Brooks Borcherding

“Our products are quite complementary; we have a lot of synergies and often the same buyer,” Brooks Borcherding, president and CEO of LiveAction, told us. “That’s when we realized that we’re much more valuable together. Our idea is to take what [Savvius does] with packets [and] what we do with flow and visualization, bring that together, and as software-defined infrastructure makes the world that much more complex, the need to have a product that can help you visualize and simplify becomes that much more compelling.”

The acquisition enables Savvius to accelerate the development of their Omnipliance, Omnipeek and Insight products while fueling LiveAction’s visualization engine with new capabilities and broader coverage of enterprise networks.

Thousands of enterprise customers worldwide use Savvius’ packet-based appliance and software solutions for network performance diagnostics. Global enterprises and service providers use LiveAction’s network-management platforms for network-performance visibility; SD-WAN visualization and verification; voice and video monitoring; and quality-of-service configuration. Combining the strengths of each company will yield solutions that are able to visualize, simplify, optimize and troubleshoot enterprise networks, from data center to edge, including East/West traffic and key multivendor application and performance-monitoring metrics.

“Our team is thrilled to be joining LiveAction to execute on our common vision of revolutionizing network management,” said Larry Zulch, president and CEO of Savvius. “Savvius and LiveAction have highly complementary offerings that will enable us to improve the experience of existing Savvius and LiveAction customers and target the entire NPMD market with superior solutions.”

Savvius’ Larry Zulch

With the acquisition, Zulch becomes executive vice president and general manager of Savvius, a LiveAction company. Borcherding expects to spend the next six months to a year bringing the companies together into a single integrated business.

In the meanwhile, it’s business as usual for each company’s respective partners. In April 2017, LiveAction launched an MSP partner program to provide access to its LiveNX platform. One year ago, Savvius launched a new PartnerOne program with a focus on relevant margins and customer growth opportunities.

“PartnerOne is tasked with empowering resellers with the tools they need to meet enterprise requirements. The addition of LiveAction to the PartnerOne program — when we do, that will be very exciting,” said Zulch. The future intent is to bring the two companies’ products and programs together, he added.