Cisco acquires Metacloud to leverage OpenStack in the hybrid cloud
Wed 17 Sep 2014
Cisco has made a contribution to a lively period of cloud startup acquisitions by purchasing Metacloud, a California-based company which specialises in deploying OpenStack into hybrid cloud environments.
The Pasadena firm was founded in 2011, the year that Cisco itself joined OpenStack’s development ecostructure, and its staff and IP will be subsumed by Cisco as a central technology in its Intercloud initiative, which seeks to create a framework of interoperable private and public clouds. Metacloud’s flagship technologies will effectively enable OpenStack-as-a-service in Cisco’s vision of a hybrid cloud environment.
The company’s founder Sean Lynch posted that “Our team and technology will complement Cisco’s existing Cloud Services team and partners to help accelerate Cisco’s Intercloud delivery by providing the broadest choice across private, public, and hybrid clouds; across distributions; in heterogeneous infrastructure environments; on-premise and off.”
Hilton Romanski, Head of Corporate Development and Senior Vice President at Cisco Systems, declared that Metacloud would become a critical component of Cisco’s Cloud Services offerings, and promised further clarification on the acquisition and its consequences in the weeks ahead.
“Cisco’s vision is for an OpenStack-based Intercloud that allows organizations and users to combine and move high-value workloads – including data and applications – across different public or private clouds as needed.”
Privately-owned Metacloud launched four years ago on $40m of funding, and has proceeded with venture capital from a diverse portfolio of investors including Silicon Valley Bank, UMC, AME Ventures and Storm Ventures. CEO Lynch was formerly the vice president of technology operations for Ticketmaster Entertainment, whilst president Steve Curry previously managed global storage operations for Yahoo!.
Lynch added “Cisco has been an important contributor and supporter of the OpenStack community. As a top contributor, Metacloud’s talent and expertise in OpenStack will add to Cisco’s support and investment to make OpenStack a leading platform for the Intercloud.”
The financial terms of the deal, which is expected to complete in the first quarter of next year, have not been revealed.
