Spirent to acquire the Fanfare Group

Spirent has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire privately held The Fanfare Group for a cash consideration of $15 million. Fanfare is a leading provider of test automation solutions that help equipment manufacturers and service providers accelerate time to market and improve product quality in the face of rapidly growing complexity.

“Addressing a clear customer need to simplify testing and increase productivity is an important part of our vision. It has been the driver for our successful partnership with Fanfare over the past two years,” said Bill Burns, CEO of Spirent. “Bringing Fanfare’s software expertise and its innovative iTest technology to Spirent will enable us to realise that vision much more quickly, including an ongoing commitment to an open, standards-based approach.”

Convergence, in multiple forms, is driving exponential growth in the complexity and scale required for successful testing of IP and ethernet devices, networks and services, creating a clear need to streamline the product and services development process. An integrated and collaborative test automation approach is becoming an increasingly important business requirement to innovate in this market. Combining the two companies’ products and services will result in a common automated test experience and a common platform that brings together engineers, technologies and processes.

Spirent and Fanfare have played leading roles in an industry initiative to move beyond vendor-specific, proprietary approaches to test automation. As founding members of the Network Test Automation Forum (NTAF), both companies have made major contributions to the development of industry standards that promote interoperability of commercial testing tools and test infrastructure.

Spirent will continue its support for standardisation through NTAF, and the acquisition of Fanfare will accelerate its ability to bring to market commercial implementations of new standards as they emerge. This commitment provides a clear path forward for customers that are applying test automation in both Spirent and multivendor equipment environments.