Cisco, Intel blow US$9.5m into cloud company
Cisco has bolstered its Web 2.0 vision by investing in SoonR, a company that offers mobile phone users remote access to their desktops.
The amount that the networking giant has invested remains undisclosed, but a statement released by SoonR put the total figure for this "Series B" round -- in which Cisco appears to have been the leading investor -- at US$9.5 million. Previous investors Intel Capital and Clearstone Venture Partners were also involved in the investment round.
However, according to SoonR, the total investment it has received in its two years of existence now totals US$15.5 million.
SoonR allows its users to access, share, or backup files on their desktop computers from their phones or other Internet-enabled devices. According to Intel Capital, SoonR was the first company to develop a mobile application in the programming language AJAX.
"Cisco was among the first to recognise that a massive convergence between the desktop and mobile worlds was on the horizon, and that next-generation solutions were needed to advance this trend," Patrick McVeigh, SoonR's chief executive, said. "We both believe that crucial business documents will need to be accessible and actionable from 'the cloud', or the layer of network intelligence, through a myriad of Internet-connected devices."
In October 2007, a partnership was announced between SoonR and the mobile-office software company Quickoffice, whose software can be found on a wide range of Symbian and UIQ mobile phones. SoonR also has deals with various international mobile operators, including Denmark's TeliaSonera.
The investment in Soonr is relatively small compared to some of Cisco's recent acquisitions of Web technology companies. Cisco paid US$3.2 billion for online document-sharing and conference company WebEx last year, and earlier acquired Orative, a company which allowed Cisco's unified communications software to work on mobile platforms. Cisco also acquired security vendor, IronPort, for US$1 billion, hoping to deliver e-mail and Web security as part of an organisation's network infrastructure.
ZDNet Australia's Liam Tung contributed to this report.