Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) on May 28 announced its intent to acquire privately held ThousandEyes, Inc. Headquartered in San Francisco, ThousandEyes’ Internet and Cloud intelligence platform delivers deep visibility and insights into the digital delivery of applications and services over the Internet.
By bringing together Cisco’s strength in network and application performance with ThousandEyes’ visibility into the Internet, the companies say customers will now have an end-to-end view into the digital delivery of applications and services over the Internet, allowing them to pinpoint deficiencies and improve network and application performance across enterprise and cloud networks.
As noted by Cisco's statement announcing the acquisition, "The last few years have seen a rapid acceleration of cloud adoption, widespread use of SaaS applications, and a reliance on the Internet and networks outside of enterprise control. This increased dependence on the Internet and other third-party infrastructures, compounded over the past several months during the COVID-19 pandemic, substantially reduces the ability for enterprise IT teams to predict, visualize and control operational behavior. The result is often a chaotic and unmanageable IT environment that makes issue resolution a time-consuming ordeal that can potentially have a massive impact on customer experience, brand reputation and revenue."
Cisco says the new acquisition will also empower enterprises to accelerate their digital transformation, no matter where they are in their journey, by delivering comprehensive visibility into applications and services delivered to customers and employees. Cisco will incorporate ThousandEyes’ capabilities across Cisco’s core Enterprise Networking, Cloud, and AppDynamics portfolios to enhance visibility across the enterprise, internet and the cloud. The acquisition is expected to close before the end of Cisco’s Q1 FY’21.
“I’m excited to welcome the ThousandEyes team to Cisco,” commented Todd Nightingale, senior vice president and general manager, Cisco Enterprise Networking and Cloud. “The combination of Cisco and ThousandEyes will enable deeper and broader visibility to pin-point deficiencies and improve the network and application performance across all networks. This will give customers end-to-end visibility when accessing cloud applications, and Internet Intelligence will improve networking reliability and the overall application experience.”
ThousandEyes will join Cisco's newly-formed Networking Services business unit, reporting to Todd Nightingale. As part of the Networking Services business unit, ThousandEyes CEO and co-founder Mohit Lad will take on the role of GM of ThousandEyes, and co-founder, CTO Ricardo Oliveira will continue to drive ThousandEyes product vision and innovation strategy.
In a recent blog post for the company, Cisco's Nightingale added, "ThousandEyes’ technology warns us when a user’s experience is less than ideal and can pinpoint where those failures were caused. With thousands of agents deployed throughout the Internet, ThousandEyes’ platform has an unprecedented understanding of the Internet and grows more intelligent with ever deployment. With ThousandEyes, AppDynamics and Cisco SD-WAN technology, we will have the ability to improve the performance, reliability and scalability of all the applications on which we depend so much."
Read a blog post from ThousandEyes co-founder and CEO, Mohit Lad, commenting on the acquisition.