On the heels of announcing it will acquire Intucell for $475 million, networking giant Cisco has further expanded its cloud portfolio by purchasing a small share of cloud service delivery software company Parallels.
Cisco has made an undisclosed equity investment in the Seattle-based company, which is earmarked for joint go-to-market activities with the goal of providing improved cloud service delivery capabilities, according to Hilton Romanski, vice president of corporate business development at Cisco.
“Cisco is continuing its commitment to technology development and innovation through strategic investments,” Romanski said in a statement. “In collaboration with Parallels, we are focused on offering a more efficient and easier-to-use cloud services delivery model for service providers. We are particularly excited about Parallels global presence – including its operations in Russia, which affords Cisco a continued opportunity to fuel innovation there and around the world.”
Parallels was founded in 1999 by Russian-born computer scientist Serguei Beloussov and employs more than 900 people worldwide.
While Cisco has not disclosed the amount of the investment, Parallels said in the statement that Cisco bought about one percent of the company and added that the stake sale does not rule out a possible initial public offering by the provider of desktop virtualization and cloud service delivery software, Reuters reported.
As part of the investment, Parallels and Cisco also agreed to expand joint development, marketing and industry initiatives.
“Parallels is committed to enabling our service provider customers to offer the most comprehensive, seamless and flexible set of cloud services for their SMB end-users,” said Birger Steen, CEO of Parallels. “By strengthening our collaboration with Cisco, Parallels is focused on accelerating its growth and offering an end-to-end solution for cloud service providers.”
Earlier this week, it was reported that Cisco will acquire self-optimizing network (SON) software maker, Intucell for $475 million in cash and retention-based incentives.
Intucell, which is based in Ra’anana, Israel, provides SON software for mobile carriers and is designed to help them plan, configure, manage, optimize and heal cellular networks automatically, based on real-time changing network demands.
The acquisition of Intucell will expand Cisco’s ability to deliver next-generation solutions with a SON software platform that supports multi-application, multi-vendor and multi-technology capabilities and allows service providers to manage operational costs and make better use of infrastructure investments, company officials said.
Edited by
Brooke Neuman
