SAN JOSE, Calif. – November 18, 2012 – Cisco today announced its intent to acquire privately held Meraki Inc., a leader in cloud networking. Headquartered in San Francisco, Calif., with offices in New York, London and Mexico, Meraki offers midmarket customers easy-to-deploy on-premise networking solutions that can be centrally managed from the cloud.

As the IT industry transforms in the mobile-cloud era, Cisco is solving customers’ networking and business enablement challenges by delivering cloud networking and device and security services. The acquisition of Meraki complements and expands Cisco’s strategy to offer more software-centric solutions to simplify network management, help customers empower mobile workforces, and generate new revenue opportunities for partners.

Meraki’s cloud networking solutions will expand Cisco’s network offerings by providing scalable solutions for midmarket businesses. The Meraki acquisition will also strengthen Cisco’s Unified Access platform, which makes IT more responsive to business innovation by simplifying IT operations and uniting wired and wireless networks, policy and management into one integrated network infrastructure, unlike other competitive offerings. 

“The acquisition of Meraki enables Cisco to make simple, secure, cloud managed networks available to our global customer base of mid-sized businesses and enterprises. These companies have the same IT needs as larger organizations, but without the resources to integrate complex IT solutions,” said Rob Soderbery, senior vice president, Cisco Enterprise Networking Group. “Meraki’s solution was built from the ground up optimized for cloud, with tremendous scale, and is already in use by thousands of customers to manage hundreds of thousands of devices.”

Meraki technology offers customers Wi-Fi, switching, security and mobile device management centrally managed from the cloud. Meraki solutions support BYOD, guest networking, application control, WAN optimization, application firewall and other advanced networking services.

Meraki was founded by members of MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science. Meraki combines a high-velocity software development methodology with a tightly linked inside sales and channel model that will form the new Cloud Networking Group.

Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay approximately $1.2 billion in cash and retention-based incentives to acquire the entire business and operations of Meraki. The acquisition is expected to close in the second quarter of Cisco’s fiscal year 2013, subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory review.

Investor and Media Events:

Rob Soderbery, senior vice president of Cisco's Enterprise Networking Group; Hilton Romanski, vice president of business development for Cisco; and Sanjit Biswas, chief executive officer and co-founder of Meraki will host a joint investor call on November 19 from 6:00-6:45 a.m. PST to discuss the proposed transaction. 

To participate in this call via Cisco Webex, go to https://cisco.webex.com/cisco/onstage/g.php?d=209867958&t=a To ask questions during the call, you must access the meeting via this Webex link. The event password is 209 867 958. The dial-in number is +1.866.432.9903 (United States/Canada). International callers can access country phone numbers at http://cisco.com/en/US/about/doing_business/conferencing/index.html. Follow the prompts to enter the Access Code (209 867 958) followed by the # sign.  The replay also will be available via webcast from Monday, November 19, 2012 on the Cisco Investor Relations website at http://investor.cisco.com.  

Supporting Resources:

• For more information on how Cisco is delivering on unified wired and wireless convergence, please visit: Cisco Unified Access, Borderless Networks and Cisco Wireless Networking Group
• Read the Borderless Networks blog and Mobility blog
• Follow Cisco Enterprise and Cisco_Mobility on Twitter

 

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Tags/keywords: Cisco, Meraki, acquisition, Unified Access, mobility, wireless, wired, switching, cloud, network, security, BYOD, IT, Borderless Networks, access point, Aironet, Catalyst, video, service provider, SP, switch, CleanAir, controller, Cisco Prime, Identity Services Engine, Mobility Services Engine, ISE, MSE, 802.11ac

About Cisco
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Forward-Looking Statements

This press release may be deemed to contain forward-looking statements, which are subject to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including the expected completion of the acquisition and the time frame in which this will occur, the expected benefits to Cisco, its product platforms and its customers from completing the acquisition, plans regarding Meraki personnel, and statements regarding our strategy to accelerate the adoption of software-based business models, our value proposition with customers, our competitive performance and new market opportunities.  Readers are cautioned that these forward-looking statements are only predictions and may differ materially from actual future events or results due to a variety of factors, including, among other things, the potential impact on the business of Meraki due to the uncertainty about the acquisition, the retention of employees of Meraki and the ability of Cisco to successfully integrate Meraki and to achieve expected benefits, business and economic conditions and growth trends in the networking industry, customer markets and various geographic regions, global economic conditions and uncertainties in the geopolitical environment and other risk factors set forth in Cisco’s most recent reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q.  Any forward-looking statements in this release are based on limited information currently available to Cisco, which is subject to change, and Cisco will not necessarily update the information.