EMC forges on with acquisition spree

Storage giant adds service assurance software vendor to shopping cart

Storage giant EMC has continued its 2012 shopping spree by inking an agreement to buy Watch4Net – the company's fourth acquisition of the year.

The Canadian service assurance software firm was acquired by EMC in an all-cash deal for an undisclosed sum.

Watch4Net, whose flagship APG product is a management solution aimed at both mobile and fixed networks, has been a partner of EMC for more than seven years.

The arrangement comes just two weeks after EMC picked up Syncplicity, an early DropBox competitor providing cloud-based file management services.

Another deal signed in May saw EMC buy into Israeli flash storage outfit XtremIO for $340m, following on from its acquisition of Pivotal Labs, which was designed to boost its big data products.

In a statement, Jay Mastaj, senior vice-president and general manager of EMC Infrastructure Management Group, said: "By bringing Watch4net into the EMC portfolio, EMC rounds out its world-class IT management solution to address customers' most critical IT management needs across their physical and virtual IT environments."

Chief executive officer at Watch4net, Michel Foix, says: "We look forward to the continued development and market adoption of our flagship product suite APG.

"IT availability and performance management are ever-changing, and the advent of cloud computing has increased the need for an end-to-end, seamless solution."

It is not thought the deal will have an impact on EMC's 2012 fiscal results.