Technology giant Cisco has reported that will pay $610 million in cash to acquire a networking start-up led by an Indian American software industry veteran. Cisco will buy San Jose, Calif.-based Viptela, a privately held software-defined wide area network company, a move that will expand its portfolio.
Viptela chief executive officer Praveen Akkiraju, a University of Madras and Harvard Business School graduate, said the company’s fabric, as it relates to SD-WAN and cloud networking, “fits in as an important piece of Cisco’s Enterprise Networking strategy which is driving an industry-wide transition to a software-centric architecture and business model.”
Viptela was founded by 2012 by former Cisco engineers Amir Khan and Khalid Raza. Cisco will buy Viptela for $610 million in cash and assumed equity awards; the acquisition is expected to close in the second half of 2017 after the completion of the customary closing conditions and regulatory review.
Cisco said managing the network is becoming more complex as applications move to the cloud, employees become more mobile and billions of Internet of Things devices are added to the network.
“Customers are turning to SD-WAN solutions to help manage and orchestrate their WAN deployments to cost effectively improve access to both the cloud and their corporate network,” Cisco said in a statement.
“Viptela provides a compelling SD-WAN solution that simplifies management, increases agility and reduces costs of interconnecting dispersed enterprise networks,” it said. The company said Viptela’s network management, orchestration and overlay technologies make it easy to deploy and manage SD-WAN.
“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,” said Scott Harrell, senior vice president of product management for the Cisco Enterprise Networking Group.
“With Viptela and Cisco, we will be able to deliver a comprehensive portfolio of comprehensive on-premises, hybrid and cloud-based SD-WAN solutions,” Harrell said. The Viptela team will join Cisco’s Enterprise Routing team within the Networking and Security Business led by senior vice president David Goeckeler.
