Cisco to Buy Metacloud

By Claire Cleveland

**Editor’s Note: Please click here for a recap of the biggest channel-impacting mergers in Q2 2014.**

Cisco plans to acquire privately owned Metacloud to accelerate its strategy to build the world’s largest global Intercloud.

The networking equipment giant’s Cloud Services architecture is based on OpenStack open-source software for building private and public clouds. Cisco says that, combined with Metacloud’s OpenStack-based cloud platform, will help it continue to create a globally distributed, highly secure cloud platform capable of meeting the demands of the Internet of Everything.

“Cloud computing has dramatically changed the IT landscape. To enable greater business agility and lower costs, organizations are shifting from an on-premise IT structure to hybrid IT – a mix of private cloud, public cloud, and on-premise applications,” said Hilton Romanski, senior vice president, Cisco Corporate Development. “The resulting silos present a challenge to IT administrators, as choice, visibility, data sovereignty and protection in this world of many clouds requires an open platform. We believe Metacloud’s technology will play a critical role in enabling our customers to experience a seamless journey to a new world of many clouds, providing choice, flexibility and data governance.”

Once the acquisition is complete – expected in the first quarter of Cisco’s 2015 fiscal year – Metacloud employees will join Cisco’s Cloud Infrastructure and Managed Services organization.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.