Networking mammoth Cisco Systems announced the purchase of Sheer Networks based in San Jose, California. The $97 million deal will add Sheer’s intelligent network and service management products to Cisco’s already vast services.
The deal will take a little time to work out. Cisco expect to have the it closed by the end of their first quarter in 2006. The price could climb as much as $25 million based on the degree of development achieved after the close.
“We are continuously investing in our business to meet our customers’ needs and the Sheer Networks acquisition will strengthen our ability to provide innovative and effective network management solutions,” said Cliff Meltzer, senior vice president for Cisco’s Network Management Technology Group.
“Our blueprint for Cisco network management includes a common services platform on which applications are delivered and the ability to support management applications from Cisco and other vendors. Sheer has a similar philosophy and parallel architecture which will accelerate our delivery of Cisco’s next generation management platform and advanced applications to our Service Provider customers.”
Cisco will get two big advantages out of this. First will be the technology Sheer offers will allow Cisco to develop their next generation products for services providers and large businesses. They plan to working on device, network and service level management applications to enable intelligent management of multi-vendor networks. This will allow Cisco to really up their product offerings for their customers.
The other big advantage is also crucial and that is interoperability. Interoperability with third parties on the Sheer stuff will give those companies the ability to develop software and hardware applications.
This makes an extraordinarily busy period for Cisco since they’ve just purchased the Danish company Kiss Technology less then seven days ago. Sheer Networks was put founded back in 1999 has 100 employees in San Jose and Petach Tikva, Israel.
John Stith is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business.
