Allot Acquires Its Web Security Partner, Optenet

Allot Communications announced that it has "..signed a definitive agreement to acquire the operations of Optenet, a global IT security company providing high-performance Security-as-a-Service (SECaaS) solutions to service providers and large enterprises worldwide .. The acquisition is based on an existing successful partnership that has already resulted in ten service provider customer wins, half of which are large tier-1 mobile operators"  

See "$6M Parental Control Win for Allot in EMEA (with Partner)" - here and "Allot Adds Parental Control and Anti-Malware VAS" - here.

"Under the terms of the agreement:

• Allot will acquire the operations of Optenet for approximately $6.5 million in cash to be paid upon and before closing, plus deferred and contingent purchase price.
   
• The deferred purchase price consists of approximately $5.5 million to be paid over two years following closing.
   
• In addition, there will be a performance-based earn-out over a period of five years. The earn-out is capped at approximately $26 million and is contingent upon reaching approximately $140 million in revenues in total over the following five years. 

The transaction is expected to close during the first quarter of 2015.Allot currently expects the acquisition to contribute a few millions of dollars to revenues and to be marginally accretive on a non-GAAP basis during fiscal year 2015".

See "Allot Communications to Acquire Operations of Optenet, a Leading Security-as-a-Service Solution Provider" - here.

$6M Parental Control Win for Allot in EMEA (with Partner)

   

URL filtering (or parental control) becomes popular recently. Procera Networks announced "Web Content Categorization & Filtering capabilities" (here) and today's announcement by Allot Communications shows the market potential.

Allot announced that it has been "awarded an approximately $6 million project from a Tier 1 operator which will be implemented in phases over several years ..  The project, awarded by a Tier-1 mobile operator in EMEA, highlights the importance mobile operators place on the cloud-based services which Allot’s product suite enable .. the comprehensive solution was built in collaboration with an Allot technology partner. Its capabilities include URL filtering based on website categories, real-time content filtering, file blocking, protocol and application filtering, multi-policy controls for age appropriate segmentation and online content inspection and filtering for uncategorized URLs".

  

Allot announced two partners for parental control: AdaptiveMobile (see "Allot Integrates with AdaptiveMobile Parental Control & Malware Protection" - here) and the more established relations with Optenet (see "Optenet and Allot Team on Integrated DPI/Parental Control" - here) with which it announced several joint projects already (Vodafone Turkey)

"The deployment focuses on the capabilities of Allot’s Service Gateway to identify traffic, in real-time, that belongs to subscribers registered for the Parental Control Service (based on the identification of the subscribers’ service plan). Allot Service Gateway steers the subscribers’ traffic to a virtualized Parental Control filter, which then screens the web pages for harmful or inappropriate content"

See "Allot Awarded $6 Million Project to Provide Virtualized Parental Control Service to Tier-1 Mobile Operator" - here.

Parental Control Deployments[209]: Coriolis and Virgin Mobile [France] Use Optenet

  

Optenet announced that "In France, Internet access providers are legally required to provide, free of charge to all its customers, filtering solutions directed at the protection of children .. OPTENET, has secured more than 70% of home filtering market in the country .. The latest companies to acquire OPTENET’s PC WebFilter are Virgin Mobile and Coriolis".

Both operators are MVNOs - Virgin over Orange and Coriolis over SFR.

See "In France, Optenet’s technology is available through several providers for about 70% of Internet users across the country.' - here.

Parental Control/Content Security Deployments [175]: ETB [Colombia] Selects Optenet

Optenet announced that it has "..signed a new agreement with ETB, one of the main operators in Colombia. The company .. is already using Optenet WOLF (Optenet Legal Web Filtering) in order to support the Colombian government's initiative to provide a safer Internet by blocking access to child pornography pursuant to Act 679. This time, ETB will offer broadband residential customers OPTENET’s Parental Control, making it possible for families to effectively manage the navigation of minors, preventing access to content that might be inappropriate for their development. The company has called the service “Content Guardia” and hopes that it can reach nearly 600,000 customers". 

"Moreover, given the strong competition in the Internet market in Colombia and throughout the region, ETB has selected Optenet’s security solution ContentSecure in order to differentiate itself from its competitors by offering security services in the cloud for businesses. This strategy seeks to retain current customers and invite new clients by offering a unique service with great added value"

See "OPTENET continues its growth in Latin America by signing a new agreement with ETB in Colombia" - here.

Parental Control Deployments [161]: SFR Uses Optenet for Controlled Children Portal

   
Optenet announced that "SFR has launched with OPTENET’s support two portals specially designed to provide content directed at children, one of them for mobile navigation and the other for traditional navigation. The content available has been compiled by Optenet who is also responsible for updating and maintaining both sites. Furthermore, the service is available free of charge to all parental control customers".

".. Contents are grouped into 10 broad categories: videos, games, education, art and culture, news, music, sports, leisure, hobbies, and school" - see figure below.

See "SFR launches with OPTENET’s support two portals for children" - here.

Optenet and Allot Team on Integrated DPI/Parental Control

   

A year ago I covered Opetenet's deployment at Vodafone Turkey (here), enabling web filtering services with Allot Communications' DPI gear.

This has turned now into a strategic alliance.

Optenet announced "a new strategic alliance with Allot [that] ..   will allow both organizations to offer operators a network intelligent solution which acts as a centralized policy enforcement point .. enabling a feature-rich parental control solution ..  known as the Allot-Optenet Parental Control Solution, fully ensures that a broad range of home and mobile devices have secure and controlled browsing helping to make the Internet safe for children. It gives service providers a set of real-time tools to develop a comprehensive package that allows parents to monitor their children’s Internet activity and take actions by blocking unwanted access or limit usage during pre-determined periods".

  

The solution (see top chart) is built on Allot's Service Gateway and Optenet's MIDAS (Multicontent Inspection and Dynamic Analysis System) products:

See "OPTENET Announces a Strategic Alliance with Allot" - here.

VAS/Security Deployments[134]: HT Mostar [Croatia] Deploys Optenet to Protect Mobile Users

 
Optenet announced that "HT Mostar, Croatia, one of the three official telecommunications operators in the country along with BH Telecom and Telekom Srpske, has selected Optenet’s WebSecure solution to provide protection from internet threats to their mobile community [ERONET] .. With this new solution, the protection comes from the cloud which means that customers are protected from digital attacks in the mobile internet before they reach the end user devices. In addition, customers will not need to install updates and the performance of their mobile devices will not be affected with the new solution. As the numbers of mobile devices increase so are internet threats increasing rapidly in the mobile network".

See "HT Mostar Croatia (JP Hrvatske telekomunikacije d.d.) to provide new Mobile Security solution to protect against digital attacks, based on Optenet’s WebSecure solution" - here.

VAS/Security Deployments [132]: Sri Lanka Telecom Deploys Optenet

 
Opetnet announced a "a new partnership with Sri Lanka Telecom, the nation's number one integrated communications service provider and the leading broadband and backbone infrastructure services provider in the country. This is a new initiative for Sri Lanka Telecom in the Cloud Security space, and the telecommunications giant has deployed Optenet WOLF and Optenet WebFilter technology delivered with Optenet’s Multi-tenant architecture. The new service now provides web filtering to the residential market in particular counting over 50,000 End Users. Sri Lanka Telecom can expand their value added security services faster due to the high availability and scalability Optenet’s unique multi-tenant platform".

Source: Sri Lanka Telecom 2011 Annual Report

See "Sri Lanka Telecom Chooses Optenet’s Technology to Offer Consumer’s Protection to over 50,000 End Users" - here.

VAS Deployments (84): Telefonica [Argentina] to Provide Security Service with Optenet

 

Optenet announced "an agreement with Telefonica Argentina .. to provide SaaS security services to more than 10,000 residential subscribers .. without the need for end-user client software. Optenet’s technology also enables the Operator to raise its competitive advantage, expand its portfolio of value added services and generate additional revenue by offering flexible, scalable and reliable security services to its customers".

See "Telefonica Argentina signs Strategic Contract with Optenet to provide SaaS Security Services to Residential Users" - here.

DPI Deployments (80): Turkcel/TurkCell Superonline Use Optenet Web Filtering (Cisco and Sandvine DPI)

  

Two weeks after announcing the deployment by Vodafone Turkey (see " Vodafone Turkey Uses Optenet and Allot for Web Filtering" - here), Optenet now announces that "both Turkcell and Turkcell Superonline, with market leadership in five of the nine countries in which it operates and approximately 60.4 million subscribers, to provide filtering services to its residential customers in Turkey .. Optenet will enable Turkcell and Turkcell Superonline to effectively filter all Web/WAP content classified as illegal by government authorities, ensuring they do not inadvertently transfer content prohibited by law .. It is a complete solution that is able to filter both HTTP and non-HTTP traffic. ".

Source: Turkcell Q1 Presentation

While the Vodafone solution was integrated with DPI gear from Allot, this time it it "fully integrated with their infrastructure interoperating with CISCO SCE and Huawei for Turkcell and Sandvine DPI for Turkcell Superonline"

See "Turkcell and Turkcell Superonline select Optenet and Alcatel-Lucent to provide fully law compliant filtering services to its residential customers before August 22, 2011 in accordance with new Turkish government regulations" - here.

DPI Deployments (74): Vodafone Turkey Uses Optenet and Allot for Web Filtering

      

Optenet announced that it "has won an RFP with Vodafone Turkey, the leading mobile communications provider in Turkey, to provide filtering services to its residential customers in Turkey .. The proposed solution should be capable of keeping profiles in the forms of white lists or black lists enabling or disabling the users to access internet and of creating pre-defined types of profiles that can be selected by the users wishing to receive Safe Internet Services based on their needs.".

See "Optenet and Alcatel-Lucent sign a contract with Vodafone Turkey to provide fully law compliant filtering services to its residential customers" - here.

"With Alcatel-Lucent managing integration and deployment, Optenet will enable Vodafone Turkey to effectively filter all Web/WAP content classified as illegal by government authorities, ensuring they do not inadvertently transfer content prohibited by law. The solution, wich enables optimized deployment through the integration of Allot hardware DPI and Optenet's software DPI, stands out for its simplicity, highly effective filtering system and flexibility when it comes to deploying it in the operator’s network infrastructure and leverages proven methods of deployment to ensure very high scalability and minimal impact or intrusion into the operator transit network".

See other parental control deployments: TalkTalk (here), Telefonica /O2 (here), Orange France (here)

Source: Optenet