Cisco recently announced the company's plans to acquire Embrane, a Software-Defined Networking (SDN) startup to enhance its Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) strategy and its underlying Nexus switch foundation. Cisco invested $6 million in Embrane about two months ago. The Santa Clara, California-based company that is led by former Spirent Communications CEO Bill Burns, will be part of Cisco’s Insieme Business Unit that oversees the development of Cisco's ACI.
Commenting on the proposed acquisition, Hilton Romanski, senior vice president and head of business development for Cisco, wrote in a blog post, "Together with Cisco’s engineering expertise, the Embrane team will help to expand our strategy of offering freedom of choice to our customers through the Nexus product portfolio and enhance the capabilities of Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI)".
In his blog post, co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Embrane, Dante Malagrino said that, "The networking DNA of Cisco and Embrane together drives our common vision for an Application Centric Infrastructure. We both believe that innovation must be evolutionary and enable IT organizations to transition to their future state on their own terms—and with their own timelines. It's about coexistence of hardware with software and of new with legacy in a way that streamlines and simplifies operations."
