Cisco to Buy P-Cube for About $200 Million
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Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) , the world&#39;s largest maker of equipment to direct traffic on the Internet, on Monday said it will buy privately held software developer
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As servers and storage start to merge into unified, virtualized systems, Cisco wants to do the same thing with the networks that connect them.On Monday, the company is set to unveil a datacenter networking platform that eventually could take the place of both the Ethernet switches that link servers as well as the Fibre Channel devices that form storage networks. The Nexus series is designed both to meet exploding demands for bandwidth and energy efficiency within data centers and to simplify the jobs of IT administrators. In the process, it could help give Cisco the central role it seeks in IT infrastructure.Cisco is already a leading player in datacenter networks with its&#160;Catalyst series Ethernet switches&#160;and its MDS storage network platform. Now it hopes to transcend those separate systems using a single, unified switching fabric and the emerging Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) standard. The platform it will use, called Nexus, will be a line of routing switches in chassis, rack-mounted and blade form. The first of these, the Nexus 7000 chassis, will be generally available in the second quarter. Prices will start at $75,000, but a typical configuration will cost about $200,000, according to Jayshree Ullal, senior vice president of Cisco&#39;s Data Center, Switching and Security Technology Group.Mark Drake is looking at the Nexus platform for future-proofing as his company, Health Management Associates, centralizes its data resources. The company runs about 60 hospitals, mostly in the Southeastern U.S. Health Management&#39;s current Catalyst switches are probably enough to handle connectivity needs in its data centers for the next two years, but it&#39;s hard to predict storage and processing requirements beyond that as he looks for the next generation, Drake said.&quot;I&#39;m looking at a little over ten years&#39; capacity,&quot; Drake said. The Nexus line is built to go far beyond the scale of the Catalysts, delivering more than 15Tbps. &quot;The capacity to grow is huge,&quot; he said.Another benefit Drake sees in the Nexus, which he has been told about but hasn&#39;t tested, is ease of management. Health Management is already trying to reduce IT staff costs by consolidating data centers from each hospital to a two main locations. Because the new platform combines storage and data switching along with security in a single switch and management interface, it could further simplify running those datacenters, he said.Initially, Cisco sees the Nexus switches at the core of datacenters that still use separate networks for processing and storage. But as FCoE emerges in storage systems, the Nexus could become the single connectivity platform, Ullal said. Its switching fabric is designed to be lossless, unlike a standard Ethernet system, which tolerates dropped packets, said Tom Edsall, senior vice president and CTO of the data center group. The platform also has built-in security features, including wire-speed encryption and authentication capability for each port.At the heart of the platform is a new, virtualized operating system, NX OS. As with server virtualization, NX OS can turn a Nexus switch into multiple logical switches running totally different processes, Ullal said . For example, one logical switch could handle storage and be managed by storage specialists, while the other links servers and is run by a different staff. A third could be a test platform. All would use a single switching fabric and set of redundant power supplies, which provides benefits in performance, economies of scale, and resiliency, she said. This virtualized architecture eventually will trickle down to other Cisco product lines, according to Ullal.Cisco also has automated some aspects of management with the Nexus line, drawing on best practices it learned partly from its customers, Edsall said. The system is designed to monitor and heal itself in many cases.The network&#39;s role in datacenters is growing as computing and storage are combined and shared, according to industry analysts. It&#39;s now the &quot;orchestrator&quot; of the datacenter, Zeus Kerravala of Yankee Group said. Cisco is the only vendor with both the networking and the computing experience to fulfill that role, he believes. But though many managers of datacenters want to see total virtualization of the datacenter, which could boost efficiency, they aren&#39;t yet ready for it.&quot;We&#39;re just entering the very early stages of the virtual datacenter,&quot; Kerravala said. &quot;This is probably at least two years away.&quot;Cisco is best positioned to build the core of datacenters because the network touches everything in it, according to Ullal, Edsall, and other executives.&quot;For Cisco, it&#39;s very critical that this platform be a launching pad to go further up the IT stack,&quot; said IDC&#39;s Cindy Borovick. However, taking control of datacenters won&#39;t be a walk in the park, she cautioned.&quot;Cisco&#39;s in a very strong position, but there are other very large suppliers that recognize how important the datacenter is and are willing to invest the R&amp;D dollars,&quot; Borovick said, citing IBM and Sun Microsystems. To Cisco&#39;s peril, datacenter administrators are more than willing to buy the best of many vendors rather than standardize on one, because they control the &quot;crown jewels&quot; of the enterprise, she said.
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NEW YORK - Cisco Systems Inc. said Monday it has agreed to acquire Sunnyvale, California, software developer P-Cube Inc. in a cash-and-options deal Cisco valued at $200 million.
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Cisco said it is buying Cognio Inc. to  round out its wireless networking product line to include wireless network spectrum analysis and management.
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Networking equipment maker Cisco Systems is to buy Perfigo for $74m (Â£40.5m), boosting the company&#39;s efforts to secure network &quot;endpoints&quot; and protect them from worms, viruses and hacking.
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Cisco Systems Inc. said on Monday it  has acquired software to create online social networking sites  from privately held Utah Street Networks, Inc., the operator of  Tribe.net.
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Cisco Systems Inc. channel partners will be able to offer real-time monitoring of enterprises&#39; networks after the company agreed to acquire NetSolve Inc.
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Femtocells are the new black Networking giant Cisco is investing an undisclosed amount in ip.access - the Cambridge company which makes femtocells and picocells.â¦
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Cisco has agreed to buy WiMax base station maker Navini Networks for $330 million.
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Cisco Systems has finalized an agreement to purchase privately held BCN Systems, a provider of networking software design. Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay approximately $34 million in cash for BCN. The price could increase by as much as $122 million if BCN meets certain development and product milestones. BCN's architecture will be incorporated across Cisco's broad routing portfolio and will support Cisco's delivery of next-generation data, voice, and video services over a converged network.
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Fourth buy of the year Cisco is continuing its buying spree, paying $135m in cash and options for Reactivity.â¦
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Networking equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc. added to its growing portfolio of security products on Monday, agreeing to buy Protego Networks Inc.
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Cisco Systems Inc. of San Jose, Calif., Monday acquired privately held P-Cube Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif. P-Cube develops service control platforms, which help service providers
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Cisco has bought IP service control vendor P-Cube of Sunnyvale, California, in a cash deal worth about $200m. The company says the deal should allow its customers to run advanced IP services such as voice
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Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO - message board) announced late Thursday that it is buying routing software startup BCN Systems Inc.
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(InfoWorld) - Cisco Systems, the biggest vendor in IP (Internet Protocol) networking, is diversifying into social networking. The router pioneer has agreed to acquire Five Across, a social-networking software company in San Francisco. Terms of the acquisition, which was announced late Thursday in California, were not disclosed. Cisco expects the deal to close in its fiscal third quarter, which ends April 28. Cisco doesn't plan to set up its own social-networking site to compete against News Corp.'s MySpace or Facebook. Instead, it will use Five Across technology to create software that will help enterprises better connect with their customers. In addition, service providers may be able to build services with the technology and sell them to their business customers, Cisco said. Five Across sells a software platform called Connect Community Builder. It includes a variety of features that enterprises can build into their Web presence for their customers, such as individual profile pages, friend lists, discussions, and posting of blogs, videos and podcasts. The company, founded in 2003, has just 11 employees, according to Cisco. Last year NHL Enterprises L.P.'s National Hockey League launched a site for hockey fans, called NHL Connect, using Five Across software. The acquisition is the first by Cisco's recently formed Media Solutions Group and part of Cisco's expansion into both the consumer and media categories. One target market for the Five Across technology will be entertainment and broadcasting companies such as The Walt Disney Co. and Comcast. But Cisco also expects social networking, like other consumer tools such as instant messaging, to be embraced by general enterprises. Consumers are now demanding social networking capabilities and want to see them on companies' Web sites, according to Cisco. Traditional media providers are ripe for using social networking, said IDC consumer analyst Danielle Levitas. "There's quite a bit of need for experimentation from [traditional] media companies to show their stockholders they can take advantage of the Web and they're not going to cede it to new media companies," Levitas said. A good social-networking component to a media company's Web site could help foster viewer loyalty or even be a place to test new shows among core viewers, she said. Consumer electronics and PC companies could also take advantage of social networking, hosting communities of consumers to share tips and advice, augmenting their technical support offerings, Levitas said. Meanwhile, social networking, with its constant conversations and user-generated content, is also good for Cisco's core business of selling network infrastructure, Levitas said. "Web-based content is incredibly bit-heavy," Levitas said. Social networking brings end users into the game so there is a lot of data coming upstream from the edge of the network as well as downstream from the company.
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Cisco Systems will pay $74 million for Perfigo, a developer of packaged network access control products. Perfigo&#39;s product, CleanMachines, will bolster up Cisco&#39;s network security offerings for the small and mid-size business market.