Net management solution firm Visual Networks Inc. Monday purchased e-business software company Avesta Technologies Inc. for $415 million in stock.

Visual Networks will exchange 6.5 million of its shares for all outstanding Avesta Technologies' common stock.

With the deal, Visual Networks (VNWK) hopes to incorporate Avesta Technologies' event management and applications monitoring capability into its product portfolio. The firm's goal is to meet the growing trend among enterprises to outsource their networks and applications to service providers.

Avesta Technologies President and Chief Executive Officer Kam Saifi will join the Visual Networks' board of directors and assume his new role as executive vice president. The two companies are expected to operate on an integrated basis.

Visual Networks is projecting the new organization's top-line revenue will grow by 50 percent in 2000 and 2001.

"This combination represents a critical piece of our articulated strategy to become the largest service management vendor with the industry's broadest portfolio of products and functionality," said Scott Stouffer president and CEO, Visual Networks.

"As a combined entity, we can offer a broad solution set for managing the Internet infrastructure end-to-end -- from client to servers to host computers -- as well as the underlying transport infrastructure."