Allot CEO Plans to Continue Acquisitions in 2013

Yoram Gabizon and Dror Reich interviewed Allot's President and CEO Rami Hadar (pictured) to the Israeli Daily TheMarker ("The only question on the agenda is how quickly we will take market share from Cisco" - here, Hebrew).

Some quotes from the interview (beyond the description of DPI technology, solution and use-cases):

• We have the resources to do things, use the money we raised and the momentum for aggressive growth. Allot acquired two companies in 2013 (here, here), and I hope we will continue doing that in 2013. 
   
• There are many advantages of being mid-size company, but from my standpoint this is not a stable state in the telecom market. We need to ask ourselves every day how to enter new areas, and grow.
    
• In recent years Allot was successful in winning large customers. In the last quarter we announced a US Tier1 wireless operator and in Europe two of the top4 MNOs are our customers. We do this direct and not through contracts with large TEMs like Alcatel-Lucent (hinting to Sandvine). 
   
• We have two groups of competitors. The first is the pure players - Sandvine, Procera and 2-3 smaller companies. Sandvine did nicely in the US cable market - but outside the US this is not a big market.
   
• The 2nd group is the TEMs - Cisco, Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent. It is not clear how much the big players are selling in this space, but my goal and challenge is to convince their customers to buy Allot - this is the growth engine.
   
• DPI is not a market - it is a technology, and customers are buying solutions that help the save costs or increase revenues. We call our product a Service Gateway, not DPI - and tell customers - let the router route, and us do the intelligent things.
   
• Net Neutrality uncertainty delays the market in the US; our success there was with analytics, video caching and optimization.
   
• There is no reason for Allot not to continue be an independent company. However I report to the board and shareholders and they will decide if Allot will be acquired, is such offer will be made. It is not on my agenda. Last year we got such offer (F5).