Concord Communications on Monday announced its plans to acquire fellow management software maker Aprisma Management Technologies for about US$93 million in cash.

Concord, known best for its network, systems and application performance reporting software says the addition of Aprisma's fault and service management technology will help Concord further expand its business service management (BSM) product plans. Concord says Aprisma's Spectrum software will enhance Concord's eHealth Suite of management software applications with Spectrum's ability to manage the availability of IT infrastructure components and the business services that rely on them.

"The acquisition dramatically improves our competitive position," says Concord President and CEO Jack Blaeser. He says the acquisition will accelerate the time to market for intelligent software to manage BSM, voice and wireless applications. "We don't believe anyone will be able to match out proactive, intelligent troubleshooting capabilities."

Specific product integration plans remain unclear, according to Blaeser who says the companies will spend the next few months speaking with customers about which capabilities they'd like to see integrated into either technology platform. The companies say there is little overlap between their product offerings, and Blaeser says the merged company will support its customers' current investments.

"We will protect what customers have paid for and there have been no plans on what products to dump," Blaeser says.

This is the second acquisition announcement in as many months for Concord, which last month put US$4 million down for Vitel Software, which makes products to manage legacy and IP PBXs and voicemail systems, currently for about 300 customers. The latest deal follows the consolidation trend among management vendors vying for customer dollars in the network and systems management market, which IDC estimates to be about US$13.2 billion.

Aprisma, which estimates 2004 revenue to about US$43 million, will operate as a business unit within Concord, with sales teams remaining stand-alone but having the opportunity for cross compensation. At closing, Concord anticipates adding Aprisma's 1,000 customers to Concord's installed base of 3,000, enabling the combined companies to explore new cross-sell and up-sell opportunities for both product lines. Concord expects fourth quarter 2004 revenue to be between US$28 million and US$29 million, which would bring the company's total 2004 revenue in at about US$104 million.

Concord typically competes with the likes of SMARTS, which last month was targeted for acquisition by storage giant EMC, Micromuse and other mid-tier management vendors, such as Aprisma, Blaeser says joining forces with Aprisma will help Concord compete directly with management heavyweights such as Computer Associates International, BMC Software, Hewlett-Packard and IBM, as well as application performance vendors like Compuware, Mercury Interactive and Opnet.

Aprisma President and CEO Mike Fabiaschi says the companies common technology goals will help speed return on investment for customers. "Our technology and GUI help customers get up and running quickly, so they can start getting results quickly," he says.

Concord anticipates the deal with Aprisma's holding company, Gores Technology Group, to close within the first quarter.

In other acquisition news, server and desktop management vendor Altiris Inc. last week announced it had closed the deal to acquire Tonic Software Inc., a maker of Web application management software.

Altiris said in a statement, the acquisition of Tonic technology would complement Altiris's current server monitoring product by "extending monitoring and diagnostic capabilities for heterogeneous environments." Tonic products could manage applications in Java 2, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and .Net Web environments.

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.