Infoblox Plans To Acquire Kentik In DNS And Network Observability Deal

Infoblox has agreed to acquire Kentik, combining Kentik’s network intelligence platform with Infoblox’s DNS, IPAM, and network services capabilities.

Infoblox has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Kentik, a network intelligence company founded in 2014. The planned acquisition is subject to regulatory approvals and closing conditions.

The deal, announced Wednesday, will combine Kentik’s network intelligence platform with Infoblox’s capabilities in authoritative DNS, IP address management, and network services. Financial terms were not disclosed.

In a blog post, Avi Freedman, co-founder and CEO of Kentik, stated that this is an important milestone for the company, customers, partners, and its team, as the company begins the next phase of its mission together with Infoblox.

“For more than a decade, we’ve been pursuing a simple but ambitious mission: to revolutionize how networks are run. As networks have grown larger, more distributed, and increasingly critical to every business, we’ve worked to give operators the intelligence they need to understand, manage, and ultimately run them more effectively. Joining Infoblox is a major step toward that vision. By combining the Kentik Network Intelligence Platform with Infoblox’s leadership in authoritative DNS, IP address management, and critical network services, we have the opportunity to build something neither company could create alone: a unified operational foundation for the next generation of networking,” he said.

Kentik’s Network Telemetry Focus

Kentik focused on using network telemetry to help operators answer questions about performance, traffic behavior, outages, and changes in the environment. Network telemetry can include data on traffic flows, routing behavior, performance conditions, and device-level metrics.

Its early work centered on flow data, which had often been used for billing, security investigations, or outage analysis. Flow data can show where traffic is coming from, where it is going, how much traffic is moving, and which paths are being used across a network.

The company later expanded its platform beyond flow telemetry. Its capabilities now include cloud visibility, internet performance monitoring, synthetic testing, routing intelligence, DDoS detection, network monitoring, AI-assisted investigations, and analytics.Freedman said these tools were developed to help network teams understand how traffic moves, how applications perform, where dependencies exist, and where changes affect operations.

Combining Network Identity And Observability

According to Freedman, customers have been asking how to manage larger and more dynamic infrastructure environments. The company has also developed AI Advisor, a tool designed to support networking tasks and assist with investigations and operational workflows.

The deal brings together Infoblox’s network identity and core network services data with Kentik’s operational telemetry and analytics. Infoblox provides authoritative information on DNS, IP address management, and network assets, while Kentik provides data on traffic behavior, performance, dependencies, and operational changes.

DNS and IP address management data help identify which assets exist on a network, how they are addressed, and how services are reached. DHCP data can also support asset discovery and identity mapping across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

Freedman said this combination is intended to support network operations where identity, addressing, DNS, topology, dependencies, traffic, and performance data are viewed together. AI-assisted network operations use this data for investigations, recommendations, and responses to recent network changes.

He said network operations and security teams need data on asset communication, service dependencies, and traffic flows across infrastructure.

With Infoblox having 75 percent of the Fortune 500 as customers, Freedman said the companies already share more than 80 customers, with customers from both sides asking about integrations between the two platforms.

On current contracts, pricing, account teams, and support arrangements, Freedman highlighted that these remain unchanged for now and Kentik will continue building its platform and following its existing roadmap.

Both companies plan to combine Infoblox’s DNS, IP address management, and network asset data with Kentik’s traffic, observability, analytics, and AI capabilities. The work will focus on connecting identity, traffic, performance, and dependency data for network operations teams.

This article originally appeared on CRN sister website CRN Asia.