Cisco looks at virtualization technologies as shared IT services that can be combined and recombined to improve efficiency. Virtualization represents a huge market opportunity.
Cisco has made a number of investments and acquisitions in virtualization, acquiring companies such as Nuova Systems and Andiamo Systems and investing in Qumranet, VirtualLogix, and VMWare.
With Andiamo's technology, Cisco has been able to offer enterprise customers the same levels of scalability, performance, and manageability in storage networking we introduced in LAN and IP networking. By acquiring Nuova, Cisco has been able to develop next-generation products for the data center market introducing the Nexus 5000 Series Switch, the first product developed by Nuova.
Cisco has invested over $150M in VMware, which gave the company about a 1.6 percent ownership stake and created a strategic partnership with a company that is a leader within the server virtualization market.
Key Acquisitions
Andiamo Systems, Inc. - Aug 20, 2002
Andiamo Systems, Inc. has developed the storage industry’s first family of multilayer intelligent storage switches and is Cisco's entry into the large, high-growth Fibre Channel Storage Area Networking (SAN) market. With Andiamo's technology, Cisco will be able to offer enterprise customers the same levels of network scalability, performance, and manageability to storage networking that Cisco pioneered in LAN and IP networking.
Nuova Systems, Inc. - April 8, 2008
Nuova Systems is a start up focused on the development of next-generation products for the data center market. Cisco today introduced the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series, the first product developed by Nuova. The Cisco Nexus 5000 is a 10 Gigabit Ethernet "top-of-rack" switch that offers unified fabric capabilities through the support for multiple data center networking protocols and software intelligence. Prior to the acquisition, Nuova operated as a majority-owned subsidiary of Cisco, which had invested $70 million and owned 80 percent of the company.
Tidal Software, Inc. - April 9, 2009
Tidal Software is the creator of intelligent application management and automation solutions that will advance Cisco's data center strategy by enhancing product and service delivery offerings. Tidal Software's intelligent solutions will bolster Cisco's data center strategy by providing timely, accurate and cost-efficient management and automation of application performance across entire business operations, from the server through the network to the desktop.
Key Investments
Qumranet
Qumranet is the leading virtualization technology company. Its hosted virtualization product is used to improve the manageability, security and policy enforcement for their desktop environments.
VirtualLogix VirtualLogix™, Inc. is the global leader in Real-Time Virtualization™ technology for connected devices. VirtualLogix VLX enables multiple operating system environments to run concurrently on shared hardware and provides a range of performance, fault tolerance and security options to address specific market requirements.
VMware Cisco has invested in VMware to strengthen inter-company collaboration towards accelerating customer adoption of VMware virtualization products with Cisco networking infrastructure and the development of customer solutions that address the intersection of virtualization and networking technologies.
