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Cisco to acquire Topspin for $250 million
By Stacy Cowley

Cisco Systems Inc. said Thursday it has agreed to buy server networking equipment provider Topspin Communications Inc. for US$250 million in cash and options.

Mountain View, California-based Topspin sells programmable server switches used in systems from vendors including Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. Buying Topspin adds to Cisco's portfolio a line of InfiniBand switches, which Cisco previously lacked.

Five-year-old Topspin has a staff of 135 in Mountain View and Bangalore, India. Cisco, based in San Jose, California, plans to add Topspin to its Data Center, Switching and Wireless Technology Group, headed by Luca Cafiero.

With more customers building server architectures incorporating blades, grid computing and clustered applications, Cisco needs to deliver technology like Topspin's server fabric switches and virtualization software, Cafiero said in a written statement.

Pending regulatory approvals and other closing conditions, Cisco expects to complete the acquisition in the quarter ending July 30.

Posted April 14, 2005 03:54 PM |