It seems like most of my posts these days are about hardware vendors buying software vendors. Here’s another acquisition in the OSS industry’s (not so mini) acquisition bubble.
Cisco is buying Cariden for $141 million. Cariden is a small organisation focused on IP/MPLS network planning, a few tens of employees, and revenues estimated to be in the low ‘teens (millions of $). That is a pretty serious multiplier considering Cariden’s modest revenues, eclipsing Opnet’s purchase by Riverbed that was announced a few weeks ago.
Buzz-words are already being cited as reasons for this acquisition: SDN blah blah; Cloud blah blah. But it all comes down to a need for good ol’ OSS to manage the increasing complexity of IP/MPLS networks and the requirements for hardware vendors to be able to accurately propose new networks, capacity upgrades, and optimisation to their telco & enterprise customers.
Good old Light Reading has a little more detail on this purchase.