Cisco to buy cloud-networking start-up Meraki for $1.2 billion

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.

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.

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