Cisco on Monday announced its latest blockbuster acquisition. The networking giant intends to buy privately held cloud  networking leader Meraki for $1.2 billion in cash and retention-based incentives.
San Francisco-based Meraki (pronounced may-rah-kee) offers midmarket customers on-premise networking solutions that can be centrally managed from the cloud. Meraki's cloud-based technology offers customers Wi-Fi , switching, security and mobile device management (MDM). Meraki solutions support BYOD (bring your own device) environments, guest networking, application control, WAN optimization, application firewalls, and other advanced networking services.
"The acquisition of Meraki enables Cisco to make simple, secure , cloud-managed networks available to our global customer base of mid-sized businesses and enterprises. These companies have the same IT needs as larger organizations, but without the resources to integrate complex IT solutions," said Rob Soderbery, senior VP of Cisco's Enterprise Networking Group. "Meraki's solution was built from the ground up, optimized for cloud with tremendous scale , and is already in use by thousands of customers to manage hundreds of thousands of devices."
IT's Mobile-Cloud Era Transformation
Cisco has been chronicling the IT industry's transformation in the mobile-cloud era and working to meet new networking and business enablement challenges with cloud networking as well as device and security services. Meraki is part of that effort. Cisco said Meraki complements and expands its strategy to offer more software -centric solutions to simplify network management, help customers empower mobile workforces, and generate new revenue opportunities for partners.
Cisco said the acquisition will expand its network offerings by providing scalable solutions for midmarket businesses. Cisco also expects Meraki to strengthen its Unified Access platform, which works to make IT more responsive to business innovation by simplifying IT operations and uniting wired and wireless networks, policy and management into one integrated network infrastructure , unlike other competitive offerings.
Meraki was founded by members of MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science. Meraki combines a high-velocity software development methodology with a tightly linked inside sales and channel model that will form the new Cloud Networking Group. The firm has offices in New York, London and Mexico. The acquisition is expected to close in the second quarter of Cisco's 2013 fiscal year. (continued...)
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