By purchasing Overture Networks for $35 million, ADVA Optical Networking intends to be "one of the leaders" in the network functions virtualization (NFV) marketplace, ADVA CEO Brian Protiva says.

As Protiva describes ADVA’s and Overture’s combined products and the willingness to work with other vendors to create an NFV ecosystem, it sounds similar to Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)'s efforts to build an NFV architecture with its OpenNFV initiative and related partner program.

“HPE’s story is similar, but our product offering is differentiated,” Protiva says.

With Overture, Munich-based ADVA also gains a bigger customer base in the U.S., including Windstream Communications.

The Overture acquisition positions ADVA with an offering that includes its own white-box network interface device (NID) and now a virtualized NID and orchestration from Overture. With this, ADVA can deliver Ethernet-based cloud services in a hybrid or NFV-pure-play environment.

Customers can buy a complete end-to-end system or they can select modules — orchestration, white-box NID, or virtual NID — to mix and match, ADVA says.

In late 2015, Overture announced upgrades to its Overture Ensemble architecture, including a new version of its Ensemble Carrier Ethernet VNF, and a new software-defined networking (SDN) controller based on the work of the OpenDaylight Project.

Although Overture was competitive with Amdocs and HPE at the orchestration layer, ADVA is open to working with these companies.

“We will work with anybody on the application environment,” says Protiva. “Most important for us is getting in front of that carrier, finding the solution at any layer, and winning business.”

ADVA has partnerships with Brocade and Juniper, and Overture worked with Brocade, Fortinet, and Intel to seal an NFV deal with Masergy in June.

In addition to the $35 million price tag, ADVA will pay $5 million to Overture upon achieving certain goals. It's a bargain compared with the $138 million Overture raised in six funding rounds from at least seven investors, according to SDxCentral research included in the LSO Market Overview report.

Protiva says 15-year-old Overture could have continued to raise money, but “decided to sell because NFV is slow to evolve." ADVA is a half-billion-dollar company.

“It’s really complex to change overnight the network elements in the carriers' networks,” he adds.

The 178 Overture employees will join with ADVA’s nearly 1,500.