Cisco Systems said it has inked a deal to acquire Tail-f, a privately held, Sweden-based multi-vendor network service management startup, for $175 million.
Playing on the network functions virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) trends, Cisco noted that Tail-f’s network orchestration products help service providers and enterprise IT organizations implement applications and network services across networking devices, and help network equipment vendors build equipment for agile, software-programmable networks.
Additionally, the acquisition of Tail-f, Cisco said, will accelerates its cloud virtualization strategy and its commitment to supporting open standards, architectures and multi-vendor environments.
“With a rapidly increasing number of people, devices, and sensors connecting across the Internet of Everything (IoE), service providers require new capabilities to deliver value-added, cloud-based services and applications,” said Hilton Romanski, senior vice president, Cisco Corporate Development, in a statement. “Our goal is to help to eliminate the bottleneck caused by operational complexity within the network. The acquisition of Tail-f’s network services configuration and orchestration technology will extend Cisco’s innovation in network function virtualization, helping service providers reduce operating costs and the time it takes to deploy new services, making agile service provisioning a reality.”
Cisco expects the deal to close during the fourth quarter of its 2014 fiscal year. At that time, Tail-f employees will join Cisco’s Cloud and Virtualization Group, which is led by Gee Rittenhouse, the unit's vice president and general manager.
Tail-f has roughly 75 employees, about 15 customers, and annual revenues of less than $30 million, according toLight Reading.
