Cisco to acquire July Systems to boost enterprise WiFi offerings

Networking and IT services giant Cisco has said that it plans to acquire cloud-based mobile services provider July Systems, which has offices in Bengaluru, to boost its enterprise WiFi platform and location-based offerings.

The announcement was made in a blog post by Rob Salvagno, the head of US-headquartered Cisco’s M&A and venture investment team.

The July Systems team is set to join Cisco’s Enterprise Networking Group led by Scott Harrell, senior vice president and general manager. 

"We expect the acquisition to be complete in first quarter of fiscal year 2019," Salvagno said.

The deal size has not been disclosed.

California-headquartered July Systems offers enterprise grade location platform services with features such as instant customer activation, data-driven behavioural insights, contextual rules engine and APIs. 

The solution is a cloud-based subscription offering with a global footprint and backed by end-to-end service-level agreements, Salvagno said.

"Enterprises have an opportunity to take advantage of their in-building Wi-Fi for a broad range of indoor location services," Salvagno explained. “In addition to providing seamless connectivity, Wi-Fi can help enterprises glean deep visitor behaviour insights, associate these learnings with their enterprise systems, and drive better customer and employee experiences.”

He added that Cisco and July Systems have worked together for several years and the latter had served as an original equipment manufacturer for Cisco Connected Mobile Experience (CMX), a location-based service.  

"We plan to add July Systems’ platform and business context capabilities to provide a unified solution on which our partners and customers can build and deliver a range of indoor location services for industries as diverse as healthcare, government, logistics, manufacturing, sports arenas, hotels, education and retail," Salvagno said.

The acquisition, according to Salvagno, is in line with the company's strategy to drive intent-based networking in enterprises - a new way of managing networks. The company had earlier said that it was close to releasing its new intent-based networks with a suite of developers tools.

Earlier this month, Cisco had said that it was working with internet giant Google to develop a new hybrid cloud solution for enterprises and that the duo was ready to launch an early access programme.

In an interaction with TechCircle earlier this year, Salvagno had said that Cisco Investments, the venture capital arm of Cisco, was looking to accelerate its merger and acquisition activity in the Indian startup ecosystem directly and indirectly.

Besides making investments through its M&A arm, the US-based tech giant runs an accelerator called Launchpad in Bengaluru.