Cisco System Inc. just announced to have the intention to acquire solid state memory systems company: Whiptail, for approximately $415 millions in cash plus incentives for the acquisition. The parties expect the acquisition to close during the first quarter of 2014.
The acquisition is a strategic move as Cisco is aiming to improve its Unified Computing System application performance adding to the solution a solid state memory into the UCS’s fabric computing architecture, the scope is to integrate business critical applications, such as virtualized, Big Data, database, High Performance Computing and transcoding workloads, delivering optimized performance.
Whiptail is specialized in making storage systems based on flash memory chips allowing data to move rapidly through servers.
Cisco, already in the x86 servers market, relies on this acquisition to extend its converged infrastructure, combining components such as servers, data storage devices, networking equipment and software to create a all in one solution.
Cisco declared to have decided to acquire Whiptail after observing the technology up close to be sure to make the right investment. The company has about 80 employees, which will be integrated into Cisco’s computing systems group.
Paul Perez, vice president and general manager, Cisco Computing Systems Product Group, said:
We are focused on providing a converged infrastructure including compute, network and high performance solid state that will help address our customers’ requirements for next-generation computing environments, as we continue to innovate our unified platform, WHIPTAIL will help realize our vision of scalable persistent memory which is integrated into the server, available as a fabric resource and managed as a globally shared pool.