A growing software-development operation in Lawrence is poised to join one of the world’s biggest players in communications equipment.

Netopia Inc., a California-based company with an office at 1321 Wakarusa Drive in Lawrence, is being purchased by Motorola Inc., a Fortune 100 company that had sales of $35.3 billion last year.

Schaumburg, Ill.-based Motorola agreed to pay $7 a share for Netopia and its $28 million in cash, valuing the deal at $208 million. The transaction is expected to close by the end of March.

Motorola said it was buying the company to extend its own ability to enable telecommunications companies to provide pay-TV services through the Internet. Motorola also is getting Netopia’s software products, which provide centralized management of Internet-based gateways, modems and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) equipment.

“Motorola and Netopia share a common vision of the connected home as the hub for seamless mobility,” said Dan Molony, president for Motorola Connected Home Solutions, a division that will include Netopia as a wholly owned subsidiary. “This acquisition strengthens our vision.”

Netopia’s Lawrence office has 42 employees, who together handle software engineering for company products that include broadband servers and systems that manage access and control for computers. The office’s employment has more than doubled since 2004.

While company officials declined to discuss specifics of the Motorola deal or its implications in Lawrence, other interested observers in town said they were looking forward to Motorola’s arrival.

“It’s wonderful,” said Donna Johnson, president of the Lawrence Technology Assn., whose board of directors includes Marc Epard, a senior engineer for Netopia. “I think that anytime there’s interest shown in the technology companies in the state – through an acquisition or merger – it’s good news for all the businesses.”

Rob Herrington, who co-founded a computer company with Epard that moved to Lawrence in 1986 and soon sold to another company that eventually became Netopia, said that Motorola was looking to score with the latest telecom “triple play” – bringing access to voice, data and video to a variety of devices, regardless of whether such content is delivered through cable lines, telephone lines, Wi-Fi networks, satellite services or a combination of them all.

Software written in the Lawrence office – which opened as Epard’s and Herrington’s WOS Data Systems 20 years ago – forms the backbone for such service, considered the next big thing for phone companies, he said.

“That’s going to be a very important part of making this go forward,” said Herrington, who still owns Netopia stock but is working on another new venture, this one to increase the efficiency of data and other communications.

Herrington said the Lawrence office wouldn’t be expected to see many changes, other than to see its importance grow as the market expands.

“These guys (in Lawrence) are good guys,” he said. “I’m sure they’ll do just fine.”