Emulex CEO Eyes Network Dollars

Jeff Benck, the new CEO of server component specialist Emulex, sees a massive opportunity in network monitoring.
By James Rogers ,

NEW YORK (

TheStreet

) -- Jeff Benck, the new CEO of server component specialist

Emulex

(ELX)

, sees a massive opportunity in network monitoring following the company's acquisition of

Endace

earlier this year.

Emulex, known for server and storage interconnect technology, completed its $127 million purchase of

NetScout

(NTCT) - Get Report

rival Endace in April, and sees its network monitoring devices as a path to new revenue.

"We have insight into the servers, and now we can monitor what's on the wire," said Benck, in an interview. "It's a key growth opportunity for us - we're playing in a market that's $600 million and it's growing at 25% compound, annually."

The CEO described Endace's technology as a "DVR for your network," recording traffic which can then be analyzed for security threats and performance problems.

"With all the aggressive threats out there, for the enterprise being able to understand what's going on and get to the root cause of problems on your network is more and more important," said Benck, who took over from Jim McCluney this week.

Emulex reported preliminary

fourth-quarter

results this week, but did not break out any specific numbers for Endace.

"We will give more color on the forthcoming earnings call," said Benck, but noted Endace is gaining traction. "We have got a lot of exciting new customers in the cloud space, some of the Web giants are starting to buy Endace - we're not quite ready to share names, but we're really excited about some of the customers that we have added."

Emulex has not yet released the date for its earnings conference call, although its fourth-quarter results are typically announced in the second week of August.

Shares of Emulex have climbed more 14% this year, most recently buoyed by sale chatter swirling around the company.

Benck, however, declined to comment on the recent

Bloomberg

report that Emulex has hired

Goldman Sachs

(GS) - Get Report

to seek potential buyers.

Emulex shares dipped 0.12% to $8.31 in Friday trading.

--Written by James Rogers in New York.

Follow @jamesjrogers

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