mergers - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• Cisco makes fourth acquisition in a month

  Cisco this week announced its intent to acquire BroadHop, a developer of network management servers and software for carriers.

• Blue Coat second company to buy Crossbeam Systems in recent weeks

  Blue Coat Systems Monday announced an agreement to acquire Crossbeam Systems for an undisclosed amount by year-end. This would mark the second time Crossbeam has been acquired in 2012, with private equity firm Thoma Bravo acquiring it just last month.

• Sprint confirms plan to buy rest of Clearwire for $2 billion

  Sprint today formally announced its plan to shell out $2.1 billion to buy the remaining 49% of Clearwire that it doesn't already own. The move gives Sprint direct access to Clearwire's extensive spectrum portfolio, just as the carrier is set to reap some $20 billion on cash from its acquisition by SoftBank.

• Juniper buys SDN startup for $176M

  Juniper Networks this week acquired Contrail Systems, a startup that makes controllers for software-defined networks, for $176 million in cash and stock.

• Cisco's wireless chief: Meraki simplifies customers' lives

  Meraki Networks, the tiny, privately held WLAN vendor that Cisco earlier this week announced it will buy for $1.2 billion, is as different from Cisco as night is from day.

• Meraki buy more than cloud Wi-Fi to Cisco

  Even though Meraki made a name for itself in cloud-based WLANs, Cisco's long-term goals for its new acquisition go beyond just Wi-Fi.

• Cloud security vendor Crossbeam bought by private equity firm

  Crossbeam has been bought by private equity firm Thoma Bravo, opening up the door for the security company to expand its product line both in-house and via acquisitions.

• Brocade buys Cisco nemesis Vyatta

  Brocade has announced its acquisition of Vyatta, a privately held maker of open source-based network software, for an undisclosed amount of cash.

• Riverbed's billion-dollar Opnet buy could pay off big, analysts say

  Despite a substantial decline in Riverbed's stock price after the news of its $1 billion acquisition of Opnet this week, industry experts say that the buyout leaves Riverbed in a uniquely strong position in the network management arena.

• RIM is so popular! Amazon, Microsoft, Nokia have all mulled buyout

  Separate reports Wednesday morning show that Research in Motion, despite being battered this year for everything from outages to late products to lost market share, hasn’t been without its admirers.

• VMware and Google on an acquisition frenzy in 2011

  While the world has been distracted by HP's baffling $10.2 billion purchase of Autonomy and <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/subnets/microsoft/">Microsoft</a>'s surprising $9 billion buy of Skype, EMC/VMware and Google have been snapping up dozens of software companies throughout 2011.

• Brocade on the block again?

  If at first you don't succeed ...

• Red Hat raids cloud storage market by acquiring Gluster

  Red Hat announced Tuesday that it is acquiring Gluster, which makes open-source software that clusters commodity SATA drives and NAS systems into massively scalable pools of storage, in a cash deal valued at about $136 million. Gluster is also a contributor to the OpenStack cloud project and Red Hat is promising this involvement will continue. Indeed, Red Hat is now uncharacteristically saying its support of OpenStack will grow even beyond Gluster to the next release of Fedora.

• 2010's IT Companies to Watch: Where are they now?

  Last year, Network World identified <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/102210-25-tech-startups.html?hpg1=bn">25 IT startups</a> poised to develop innovative technology for a new age of <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/supp/2009/ndc3/051809-cloud-faq.html">cloud computing</a>, <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/102510-burning-questions-virtualization-storage.html">virtualization</a> and mobility.

• Sprint cheers government move to halt AT&T-T-Mobile deal

  It's not often a company will cheer when the government directly intervenes in its industry, but things are different when you face potential oblivion without government action.