Cisco to acquire storage software vendor
Cisco to acquire storage software vendor
Cisco Systems has said it has reached an agreement to acquire Actona Technologies, a developer of wide-area file services software that facilitates data management across geographically distributed offices, for US$82 million in cash.
The acquisition of is subject to various standard closing conditions and is expected to close in the first quarter of Cisco's fiscal year 2005.
Actona's technology will augment Cisco's offerings by expanding the functionality of Cisco's branch office access router portfolio with network services that enable WAN-optimised file transfer and access. In addition, Actona will extend Cisco's solutions for Data Centre Storage Consolidation to the branch office.
"The large amount of mission-critical information that resides on employee desktop, laptop computers and workstations needs to be shared, backed up, and archived. Today's distributed branch office storage management methods are complex and expensive," said George Kurian, vice president for Cisco's Routing Technology Group.
"Providing intelligent network services so distributed enterprises can centralise file servers and storage, and better protect and cost-effectively manage their remote office data is critical. Actona's technology is a best of breed wide-area file services solution, enabling storage consolidation while providing 'LAN-like' file access over a WAN."
Upon close of the acquisition, the Actona team will report to George Kurian, vice president and general manager of Cisco's Routing Technology Group. Actona was founded in 2000 and has 48 employees in the United States and Haifa, Israel.
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