Cisco has today announced that it has agreed to acquire Viptela in a transaction worth $610 million. The acquisition deal includes cash, as well as stock options. This deal is aimed to boost Cisco’s SD-WAN portfolio and accelerate its transition to a subscription-based business model.
The acquisition is expected to close in the second half of 2017. It will join the Enterprise Routing division within Cisco’s Networking and Security Group led by Senior Vice President and General Manager David Goeckeler. Viptela and Cisco engineering teams will be working closely together to enhance Cisco’s SD-WAN offering and ensure continued support.
Scott Harrell, senior vice president of product management for the Cisco Enterprise Networking Group, said,
Viptela’s technology is cloud-first, with a focus on simplicity and ease of deployment while simultaneously providing a rich set of capabilities and scale. These principles are what today’s customers demand. With Viptela and Cisco, we will be able to deliver a comprehensive portfolio of comprehensive on-premises, hybrid, and cloud-based SD-WAN solutions.
Viptela had so far raised $108.5 million in venture funding from investors including Sequoia Capital, Northgate Capital, and Redline Capital. Their most recent funding round was in May last year, in which it raised a massive $75 million.
The startup, founded by Amir Khan, Atif Khan, Ramesh Prabagaran, and Khalid Raza, makes an SD-WAN solution — meaning a software-defined wide area network. This refers to a software-based network that enables companies to seamlessly connect the networks of geographically dispersed offices.
It provides clients with an SD-WAN solution which simplifies management, increases agility and reduces costs of interconnecting dispersed enterprise networks. Its network management, orchestration, and overlay technologies, which make it simple to deploy and manage SD-WAN.
While Cisco provides both on-premises and cloud-based SD-WAN offerings, its vice president of Corporate Business Development, Rob Salvagno, stated that the acquisition will allow the company to provide an alternative for enterprises seeking an ‘easy to deploy’ and ‘simple to manage’ solution.
With the acquisition of Viptela, Cisco can offer customers more choice in their enterprise branch offices and WAN deployments, with a compelling SD-WAN solution that is easy to deploy and simple to manage. As per the company, together with Viptela they’ll be able to deliver next-generation SD-WAN solutions to best serve all size and scale of customer needs while accelerating Cisco’s transition to a recurring, software-based business model.
This marks the second acquisition by the networking giant in the current year. Earlier, in January, Cisco acquired AppDynamics in a deal worth $3.7 billion.
