The acquisition is described as a ‘technology and talent’ purchase. Virtuata’s technology improves security on virtual machines; its staff, said Hilton Romanski, VP and head of corporate business development at Cisco, “will join Cisco’s Data Center Group led by David Yen, senior vice president, Data Center Group.”
Cisco has long been an active buyer, but has in recent times focused on small companies and start-ups – such as Truviso (real-time network data analysis) and ClearAccess (customer-premise equipment management). This latest acquisition sits firmly within this data center, cloud and virtualization focus. “As more and more business applications move to virtualized platforms, security and isolation become necessary conditions at the virtual machine level,” said Romanski.
Cisco is already strong in data centers and especially with colocation providers. This purchase will only strengthen that position as data centers evolve into virtualized cloud environments. “Together,” said Romanski, “Cisco and Virtuata will enable consistent and enhanced security for virtual machines allowing customers to accelerate the deployment of multi-tenant, multi-hypervisor cloud infrastructures.”
Although shares are low, in May Cisco reported its second successive quarter of improved earnings. Financial details for this acquisition were not disclosed.