Cisco agreed to acquire privately held Cariden Technologies, a provider of network planning, design and traffic management solutions for telecommunications service providers, for approximately $141 million in cash and retention-based incentives.
Cariden’s network planning and design tools help service providers to enhance the visibility, programmability and efficiency of their converged networks, while improving service velocity. Cariden’s MATE software is widely used by global tier-1 ISPs, PTTs, MSOs and mobile operators for IP/MPLS network engineering.
Cariden has recently extended its network visibility and traffic control platform to perform business intelligence function by leveraging its traffic flow collection from key nodes in a carrier network. Specifically, Cariden has now added a Flow Interface to its MATE portfolio, enabling the ability to collect and analyze NetFlow, S-Flow and J-Flow data to determine the cost of traffic flows and monitor their use of network resources. This includes being able to analyze peering traffic compliance to agreements and calculate bit-mile costs for that and other services, thus providing operations staff the ability to meet their obligations for transparency to the commercial side of their business
Cariden has also developed a blueprint for infrastructure software defined networking (SDN) that provides visibility and programmability of network resources, simplifying network control through an open API.
Cariden is based in Sunnyvale, California and led by Arman Maghbouleh since its founding in 2001. Following the acquisition, it will be integrated into Cisco’s Service Provider Networking Group.
Cisco said the acquisition supports its Open Network Environment (ONE) strategy by providing sophisticated wide area networking (WAN) orchestration capabilities. These capabilities will allow service providers to improve both the programmability of their networks and the utilization of existing network assets across the IP and optical transport layers.
“The Cariden acquisition reinforces Cisco’s commitment to offering service providers the technologies they need to optimize and monetize their networks, and ultimately grow their businesses,” said Surya Panditi, senior vice president and general manager, Cisco’s Service Provider Networking Group. “Given the widespread convergence of IP and optical networks, Cariden’s technology will help carriers more efficiently manage bandwidth, network traffic and intelligence. This acquisition signals the next phase in Cisco’s packet and optical convergence strategy and further strengthens our ability to lead this market transition in networking.”
