Cisco says open to 'opportunistic acquisitions' to achieve vision
Cisco
that it is ready to acquire companies opportunistically, strategically aligning to achieve a broader vision.
"If an acquisition can help accelerate achieving vision, then we won't be shy to apply our knowledge into it," Jeetu Patel, President and Chief Product Officer at
Cisco Systems
, told ET, adding that the company's "acquisition strategy is opportunistic."
In more than 30 years, the US multinational acquired over 200 mid-to-large sized companies.
Cisco is aggressively driving its artificial intelligence (AI)-led portfolio across networking, security and data centres.
Last year, San Jose-based Cisco acquired
Splunk
in a $28 billion deal in a bid to advance
AI-driven portfolio
and future-proof its customers. The merger enabled Cisco to become one of the largest software companies worldwide.
"If something comes up that we think is going to go on further or pause, we won't be shy to deploy our balance sheet, but otherwise we are building, we are going to be great builders first, and we will acquire opportunistically when we want to make sure that we can augment in the building exercise," the top executive said.
Back in 2020, it had also acquired ThousandEyes Inc., a cloud intelligence platform provider to offer customers a visibility into the digital delivery of applications and services over the internet, enabling them to find deficiencies and improve network and application performance across enterprise and cloud networks.
In 2017, Cisco acquired
AppDynamics
which is now a part of the company's Observability portfolio.
The company said that it is reinventing infrastructure for the next wave of AI.
"The success of AI as we go forward is this notion of trust where safety and security are prerequisites for AI taking off," Patel said separately.
"Cisco is the infrastructure provider that's going to work with the ecosystem for AI build-outs and we are going to make sure that we help with the transition to the agentic era for every company of every size whether it's a hyperscaler, neocloud, service provider or an enterprise of any size or scale."
With an array of innovations around feature-proofing workplaces, Cisco said that it has refreshed and simplified its portfolio to make it more user-friendly. These include Agile Service Networking, Unified Nexus Dashboard, Live Protect, Unifying Catalyst and Meraki, Smart Switches, and Cisco Cloud Control.
(The author is attending Cisco Live 2025 at the invitation of Cisco Systems)
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