Cisco to Buy Collaboration Company Acano for $700 Million
November 20 2015 - 09:08AM
Dow Jones News
By Lisa Beilfuss
Cisco Systems Inc. said Friday it agreed to buy privately held
conferencing software company Acano Ltd. for $700 million, a move
by the network giant to grow its collaboration business.
The cash deal is expected to be completed in Cisco's quarter
ending April 30.
Cisco, based in San Jose, Calif., sells routing and switching
systems that companies use to handle Internet traffic and move
information within corporate data centers. But the company has also
been moving to grow other businesses, including collaboration and
security software.
Acano's hardware and software includes gateways and video, and
audio-bridging technology that allows users to connect video
systems. According to Cisco, less than 10% of world-wide conference
rooms are connected via video and there is a market shift under way
as customers want the ability to easily connect from anywhere.
Cisco said its collaboration business is seeing the impact of
that trend, with 17% growth in the segment in the latest quarter
from a year earlier. The company's collaboration segment offers
voice, video, data and mobile applications on fixed and mobile
networks.
In its most recent business year, collaboration made up 11% of
total revenue, behind switching and routing.
The Acano deal comes amid a string of acquisitions by Cisco to
beef up its security business. Last month, the company struck a
deal to buy Lancope Inc. for about $453 million, on the heels of a
deal in June to buy OpenDNS, which maintains a network of
domain-name servers to help route Web traffic and can use that
technology to help block attacks carried out over the Internet. In
its biggest deal in the space, Cisco in 2013 acquired cybersecurity
firm Sourcefire for $2.7 billion.
Write to Lisa Beilfuss at lisa.beilfuss@wsj.com
Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 20, 2015 08:53 ET (13:53 GMT)
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