Cisco buys cloud orchestration startup CliQr for $260 million
Networking giant Cisco said on Tuesday that it will pay $260 million for cloud orchestration startup CliQr.
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Based in San Jose, CliQr enables customers to build more flexible datacenter operations and then manage them from a single pane.
The startup's CloudCenter platform is used to make software applications deploy more effectively across public, private and hybrid cloud environments.
The deal will strengthen Cisco's offerings for the cloud computing market in several key areas. First, CliQr has out-of-the box support for major public cloud environments operated by the likes of Google, Microsoft, VMware and Amazon.
With CliQr's price comparison tool, customers can pick through instance configurations within the various cloud environments and determine costs before they deploy. Depending on need, customers can also map out a blueprint for infrastructure provisioning and app deployment that isn't hard wired to a single cloud environment.
To manage all of that flexibility, CliQr provides a dashboard with governance control of all applications, clouds and users.
Cisco plans to integrate CliQr as part of its Cisco One Enterprise Cloud Suite. The CliQr team will join Cisco's Insieme Business Unit reporting to Prem Jain, senior vice president and general manager.
"Customers today have to manage a massive number of complex and different applications across many clouds," said Rob Salvagno, VP of Cisco Corporate Development. "With CliQr, Cisco will be able to help our customers realize the promise of the cloud and easily manage the lifecycle of their applications on any hybrid cloud environment."
The acquisition is the latest move by Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins to focus Cisco's products beyond its proprietary software and hardware and toward a broader range of computing needs.
Last month Cisco plopped down $1.4 billion in cash to acquire Internet of Things startup Jasper Technologies.
The deal gave Cisco a major boost in the booming IoT segment and built upon the company's IoT efforts focused on the manufacturing, transportation, utilities, and oil and gas industries.
In October, Cisco snapped up Cologne-based startup ParStream, which provides a database for analyzing large amounts of IoT data in near real time anywhere on the network.
As for CliQr, Cisco expects the acquisition to close during its fiscal third quarter.