COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Packeteer Inc.'s $16.5 million all-cash offer for Mentat Inc. could breathe new life into a 15-year-old transport protocol originally developed by Silicon Graphics Inc.
Los Angeles-based Mentat, a specialist in protocol acceleration for space-based networks and military users, is one of the few companies actively using Xpress Transfer Protocol, developed by former SGI chief scientist Greg Chesson.
While Packeteer (Cupertino, Calif.) is interested in the customer base for Mentat's SkyX product line, the suitor is stressing that it considers the most valuable part of the acquisition to be Mentat's protocol work and intellectual property.
Mark Urban, product line manager for new markets at Packeteer, said XTP can work with the ubiquitous TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), but provides a transparent gateway to accelerate traffic without waiting for TCP acknowledgement messages.
XTP allows dynamic window sizing and reduces packet retransmissions.
Urban said Mentat's proprietary work does not end with XTP. Mentat has developed Web prefetch and FastStart concepts for HTTP traffic, and has developed content-distribution methods that can change TCP unicast messages to a "fan-out" multicast.
"We knew about Mentat because we had been in some joint satellite and military accounts and recognized the value of their software development," Urban said. "Not only will we continue to support the SkyX Gateway, but we think this will give Packeteer itself greater visibility in military and space accounts."
The SkyX product line will survive indefinitely, and Packeteer will begin work immediately on integrating Mentat software functionality directly in Packeteer's WAN Application Traffic Management product line. Mike Schumacher, Packeteer's vice president of engineering, will oversee the Mentat business unit, with operations in Los Angeles and in British Columbia.
"Packeteer doesn't have a federal systems group today, but the acquisition of Mentat might warrant that," Urban said.
The acquisition is expected to add as much as $7 million to Packeteer's revenues in 2005.
XTP has had proponents since the late 1980s, when Chesson left SGI to form Protocol Engines Inc., a company that planned to offer chip sets to implement XTP. Protocol Engines folded in the mid-1990s, and rights to XTP were transferred to the XTP Forum.
Mentat was a consistent supporter of XTP in its 17 years of existence.
