In its latest push in building and expanding its cloud computing portfolio, Cisco acquires the Wi-Fi and cloud-networking start-up, Meraki, for $1.2 billion.
The announcement comes days after the networking giant announced last Friday it will acquire US-based software company Cloupia for $125 million.
The acquisition of Meraki will strengthen Cisco’s unified access platform and expand its network offerings by providing scalable software-centric solutions for midmarket businesses, Cisco said in a statement released Sunday
“The acquisition of Meraki enables Cisco to make simple, secure, cloud managed networks available to our global customer base of mid-sized businesses and enterprises. These companies have the same IT needs as larger organizations, but without the resources to integrate complex IT solutions,” said Rob Soderbery, SVP of Cisco enterprise networking group.
“Meraki’s solution was built from the ground up optimized for cloud, with tremendous scale, and is already in use by thousands of customers to manage hundreds of thousands of devices.”
Headquartered in San Francisco, California, with offices in New York, London and Mexico, Meraki offers midmarket customers easy-to-deploy on-premise networking solutions - Wi-Fi, switching, security and mobile device management - that can be centrally managed from the cloud.
The acquisition, which is subject to regulatory review, is expected to close in the second quarter of 2013.