But what about the Mentat staff? Packeteer is keen to get them on board: The Cupertino, Calif., firm will pay around $3.5 million in retention bonuses to the Mentat employees. Côté expects the Mentat payroll of 20 employees to stay with Packeteer.
Packeteer, which predicts the deal will add between $6 million and $7 million to its 2005 net revenue, confirms that Mentats Los Angeles office will remain open. The acquisition will bring Packeteers total number of employees to around 280.
Satellite is emerging as a hot area for vendors of devices that improve application performance. In October, for example, Packeteers rival, Peribit Networks Inc., announced a partnership with iDirect Technologies, a manufacturer of satellite networking equipment. The two companies agreed to "reference sell" Peribits SR-15 and iDirects iNFINITI satellite networking devices into their existing customer bases (see Peribit Touts Product, Partnership).
Finding new routes to market is seen as key at a time when a number of rival vendors are battling to win deals from bandwidth-hungry users. Startup Swan Labs Corp., for example, is hard at work building out its reseller channel (see Vendors Widen WAN Strategies).
James Rogers, Site Editor, Next-Gen Data Center Forum