Cisco Nabs Actona

Cisco has acquired remote storage management start-up Actona, which announced $10 million in funding just three months ago.

The network equipment giant will pay $82 million in cash for the 83 percent of Actona Technologies that it doesn’t already own. Actona makes wide area network file services software to help large companies store and manage data at far-off locations.

Although it has been an investor, Cisco spokeswoman Elizabeth McNichols said none of Actona’s technology has been used in Cisco’s offerings to date.

Later this year, Cisco will fold Actona technology into its full-service branch offering, which gives workers in remote offices fast access to centrally deployed and managed file systems. In addition, Actona will extend Cisco’s offerings for data-center storage consolidation to the branch office.

The deal is expected to close by October. When it does, Actona’s 48 employees will report to George Kurian, vice president and general manager of Cisco’s routing technology group.

Actona was founded in 2000 and recently raised $10 million in third-round financing with the intent to expand sales, marketing, customer service and business development. Overall, it raised $23 million in venture capital backing.

Investors and analysts (and evidently Cisco) believe that Actona’s market is growing. The research firm Taneja Group estimates that the market for wide area file services will grow to $2 billion annually by 2005.

For Cisco, it’s the second acquisition of a privately held firm this month. Earlier it paid $89 million for the assets of core router maker Procket Networks.

Also on the storage acquisition front, Adaptec announced it will license and acquire certain RAID data-protection intellectual property, RAID products and expertise from IBM to expand and enhance Adaptec RAID product offerings.

Under the agreement, Adaptec will deliver RAID controllers to IBM for its eServer iSeries and pSeries servers. Adaptec expects the expanded RAID product offerings to yield $150 million in new revenue over the next three years.

Article courtesy of InternetNews.com