Cisco to acquire SDN data center start-up Embrane

Cisco's Hilton Romanski (Source: Cisco Blog)

On April 1, Cisco announced its intent to acquire the software defined networking (SDN) specialist Embrane (Santa Clara, CA), a provider of a lifecycle management platform for application-centric network services.

Writing on the Cisco Blog, the company's senior vice president and head of business development, Hilton Romanski, stated, "With agility and automation as persistent drivers for IT teams, the need to simplify application deployment and build the cloud is crucial for the data center."

Romanski continued, "As we continue to drive virtualization and automation, the unique skillset and talent of the Embrane team will allow us to move more quickly to meet customer demands. Together with Cisco’s engineering expertise, the Embrane team will help to expand our strategy of offering freedom of choice to our customers through the Nexus product portfolio and enhance the capabilities of Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI).

With this acquisition, we continue our commitment to open standards through programmable APIs and multi-vendor environments. More importantly, we remain committed to the rich ecosystem of partners and customers in production through the automation of network services, cloud and system management orchestration and automation stacks."

As noted at Data Center Knowledge, Cisco made a strategic investment in Embrane last year, leading a $14 million Series C funding round. Embrane will be integrated into Cisco’s Nexus data center switch portfolio and extend Cisco’s Application Centric Infrastructure capabilities. ACI is Cisco’s proprietary approach to data center SDN.

The Embrane team will be joining Cisco's Insieme Business Unit. Cisco expects the acquisition to be complete before the end of the current quarter; financial terms of the acquistion were undisclosed.