Cisco to acquire Sequoia-backed network intelligence firm ThousandEyes

Three years after splurging $3.7 billion on applications monitoring firm AppDynamics, San Jose, California headquartered networking major Cisco is all set to purchase another monitoring company. 

Cisco announced it is buying  San Francisco headquartered network intelligence startup ThousandEyes. The deal will help the networking giant offer improved network and application performance services to enterprises, a statement from Cisco said.

Although the financial details of the transaction were not disclosed by the company, the deal value is placed at around $1 billion, according to a Bloomberg report. 

ThousandEyes is backed by venture capital firm Sequoia Capital; Salesforce Ventures, the investment vehicle of customer relationship management firm Salesforce; Portola Valley, California based venture capital firm Tenaya Capital; private equity firm Sutter Hill Ventures and venture capital firm Thomvest Ventures, according to information on its website. 

The new acquisition is in line with Cisco’s purchase of AppDynamics in 2017 for $3.7 billion. 

Cisco will add ThousandEyes capabilities in its AppDynamics application intelligence portfolio to enhance visibility across the enterprise, internet and the cloud, Todd Nightingale, senior VP at Cisco’s enterprise networking and cloud division said in a statement.

Founded in 2010 by University of California (UCLA) graduate Mohit Lad and Ricardo Oliveira, ThousandEyes provides internet network monitoring at enterprise-level and tracks the performance of business-critical software applications. It claimed to have 400 employees, 230 clients and order inflows worth $100 million in FY20. The platform counts enterprises such as eBay, Paypal, Conde Nast, S&P Global, ScotiaBank, Microsoft and Mastercard among others as its clients.  

The acquisition is expected to close by the end of Cisco’s Q1 FY21 and ThousandEyes will be absorbed by Cisco’s networking services business unit headed by Todd Nightingale. 

Founders Mohit Lad and Ricardo Oliveira will also be on-boarded as part of the deal.

“The combination of Cisco and ThousandEyes will enable deeper and broader visibility to pinpoint deficiencies and improve the network and application performance across all networks. This will give customers end-to-end visibility when accessing cloud applications, and internet intelligence will improve networking reliability and the overall application experience,” Nightingale said. 

In a separate deal, Indian IT services provider HCL Technologies announced acquisition of Cisco’s self-optimising network (SON) technology for $50 million enabling multi-vendor multi-technology and application support to its clients.

In early March, Bharti Airtel partnered with Cisco to launch the country’s largest 5G-ready, 100 gigabit ethernet internet protocol (IP) and optical integrated network to enhance network availability.