Finisar Spun-Off its SAN Monitoring and Testing Business

Finisar Corporation had completed a transaction whereby it spun-off certain assets of its Network Tools business associated with its NetWisdom business to an investment group of storage and software sector veterans, led by Mark Urdahl, a former IBM executive who co-founded the Fibre Channel Systems Initiative, Jim Davidson, a founding partner of Silver Lake Partners, and Steve Mankoff, a former senior executive at Siebel Systems. Finisar will retain a minority stake in the spin-off.

The NetWisdom product line, an industry-leading software and hardware solution, is used for monitoring and analysis of SAN environments within enterprise data centers. NetWisdom provides real time monitoring and proactive analysis of complex SAN issues. The award-winning solution has been adopted by leading Global 500 enterprise data centers to ensure uninterrupted access to business critical information.

"Our commitment to customers is always a top priority, and we believe a dedicated, stand-alone entity will better serve our customers. We expect a smooth transition for existing NetWisdom customers as a result of this transaction," said Jerry Rawls, Chairman and CEO of Finisar. "We have made excellent progress in this part of our business, but we have confidence that this team of private equity investors will provide the growth capital and singular focus desired for this business grow rapidly and satisfy customer demand in the enterprise data center market."

"I have known and worked with Jerry Rawls and Finisar since 1993 when we started the Fiber Channel SAN initiative," said Mark Urdahl. "The scale and complexity of today’s Storage Area Networks has far exceeded our expectations. The NetWisdom product line solves a critical challenge for today’s rapidly growing data centers. I am excited about the opportunity to invest significantly in this product platform and work closely with our partners and systems integrators to better serve needs of customers."