Network behemoth Cisco Systems has introduced its intent to accumulate efficiency monitoring supplier ThousandEyes. The COVID-19 pandemic has actually slowed down components of the financial system, however not so Cisco’s acquisition machine. While no buy value was given, earlier within the day Bloomberg speculated it was within the $1 billion vary.
This might seem to be a hefty price ticket, however I’ve all the time been of the opinion that if an acquisition is an efficient one, the acquirer can’t actually overpay. Take Meraki for instance; Cisco plunked down $1.2 billion for the cloud WiFi vendor, however it opened up new market alternatives and introduced new capabilities to the corporate.
I have a look at the acquisition of ThousandEyes the identical method. Most of Cisco’s acquisitions influence a enterprise unit or two, and typically a number of, however ThousandEyes has the power to influence virtually all of Cisco’s merchandise. For those who aren’t acquainted with ThousandEyes, the corporate is finest referred to as an web monitoring firm that measures the efficiency of web connections throughout the globe. Traditionally, folks handled the web as a “black box”; as soon as visitors hits the web, enterprises, cloud corporations and others don’t have any insights or management.
ThousandEyes shines a light-weight on web blind spots
But not so. In actuality, there is no such thing as a “internet” per se. Rather it’s composed of a lot of networks that work collectively to ship visitors from level A to B. But not all networks are created equal, and ThousandEyes turned the primary firm to measure this. Over the previous a number of years, it has developed from being a network-monitoring vendor to at least one that gives insights into digital experiences.
Cisco has been masterful at catching market transitions
One of the hallmarks of Cisco’s acquisition technique is its skill to catch market transitions on the proper time. Five years in the past, ThousandEyes was a pleasant to have, however we’re in the course of a lot of market transitions that now make it a must have. This consists of cloud computing, UC and CC shifting to a SaaS mannequin, SD-WAN and the COVID-19 inducing work at home. Each of those enhance a corporation’s use of the community as a part of the company community. The wrestle for IT execs is that the majority administration instruments can’t see exterior the standard company boundaries. As the axiom goes: “You can’t manage what you can’t see.”
Cisco presently has a best-in-class set of community and software monitoring instruments that gives visibility throughout the enterprise community. The mixture of Cisco and ThousandEyes will take away the delineation between private and non-private networks. When it involves cloud and cellular functions, there’s one community, and now Cisco can measure, benchmark and handle person expertise from the cloud to the endpoint and each step in between.
ThousandEyes is the primary acquisition for Todd Nightingale in his new function as SVP and GM of Cisco’s Enterprise Networking and Cloud enterprise models. Prior to this place, he was GM of Meraki. I’ve had the pleasure of assembly Nightingale a number of occasions, and he’s obsessive about person expertise and ease. And once I say obsessed, I imply in a Steve Jobs-kind-of-way, which is…
