NetScout was fifteen years old when it went public, and its two founders still ran it. Anil Singhal and Narendra Popat left Wang Laboratories in 1984 to start the company outside Boston. By August 1999 corporate networks had become the plumbing of every business. When an application slowed down, nobody could tell why. NetScout sold probes and software that watched the traffic and showed IT staff where the trouble was.

Two Engineers From Wang

Singhal and Popat co-founded NetScout in June 1984. Singhal had been a project manager at Wang Laboratories, the Massachusetts computer maker. NetScout's products sat on a network and recorded the packets passing through it. Its software turned that data into reports on which applications were using the network and how well they performed. Large companies and government agencies used it to keep their networks running and plan for growth.

Eleven Dollars and Still Watching

NetScout priced its IPO at $11 a share in August 1999 and listed on Nasdaq as NTCT. It survived the dot-com crash by selling to big enterprises and, later, to phone carriers. In 2015 it agreed to take on Danaher's communications business in a large stock deal. More than 27 years after its IPO, NetScout is still public on Nasdaq and based in Westford, Massachusetts.

Cover: Scouts and Guides to the Army of the Potomac, Alexander Gardner. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for army scouts (watching the field).