Cisco Rolls In Tidal Software for $105M

Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) has announced its intention to acquire Tidal Software for US$105 million in cash and retention-based bonuses.

The privately held company makes intelligent application management and automation software. Cisco says that the company's line will enhance its data center product and service delivery offerings. Customers will essentially be able to better optimize the performance of business applications and automate best practices with the addition of Tidal to Cisco's portfolio.

The acquisition will also allow Cisco and its ecosystem to develop additional partner-led services, the company said.

Welcome to the Machine

When the acquisition closes, Tidal Software will become part of the Cisco Advanced Services organization. The acquisition, subject to standard closing conditions, is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Cisco's 2009 fiscal year.

The acquisition follows on the heels of a slew of new products and services Cisco introduced this month that fall under an initiative Cisco calls the "Unified Computing System." This strategy is to unite computing, networking, storage access and virtualization into a scalable, single system.

Unified Computing

"The most interesting piece of this deal is that Tidal offers tools and applications that can monitor and determine performance of applications running on networks -- including those of SAP (NYSE: SAP) and other enterprise vendors," Charles King, principal of Pund-IT, told the E-Commerce Times.

In the grander scheme of things, he continued, the Tidal Software acquisition will prove to be a critical piece on delivering end-to-end systems capabilities in Cisco's Unified Computing initiative, he said. "What Tidal offers Cisco is a critical piece of service delivery to achieve this goal."

Consumer Play

Cisco is also making a play for consumer-oriented technologies, Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Research told the E-Commerce Times.

As an example, he pointed to the networking giant's recent acquisition of Flip Video camera maker Pure Digital Technologies for a whopping US$590 million in stock.

That deal is expected to close by the fourth quarter of Cisco's 2009 fiscal year. Flip Video products are tailored for Web 2.0 aficionados. They're equipped with FlipShare, an application that allows users to easily organize and edit videos and then share them instantly online.

What these two acquisitions say about Cisco is that the company is not limiting itself to any one strategy, Sterling noted. "It also has recognized the recession as the perfect buying opportunity to move aggressively to embrace a broader range of services and to get good deals."