Cisco agreed to acquire Isovalent, a start-up focused on open source cloud native networking and security. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Isovalent holds leadership positions in the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and eBPF Foundation, in addition to upstream software contributions, and has led the development of Cilium, the leading cloud native solution for networking and security.
eBPF, which stands for extended Berkeley Packet Filter,” provides a lightweight, efficient, and secure framework for running bytecode in the Linux kernel without changing kernel source code or loading kernel modules. Originally designed for network packet filtering, eBPF has evolved to offer more generalized functionality, including:
- Network Functionality: eBPF is widely used for networking tasks, such as filtering, monitoring, and routing of network packets.
- Observability: It allows for detailed monitoring and tracing of system and application behaviors. eBPF can be used to trace kernel and user-space functions, making it a powerful tool for performance analysis and debugging.
Cilium provides IT and platform engineering teams with networking capabilities and visibility into the behavior and communication of cloud native applications, enabling seamless policy definition of software-defined networks. Isovalent has also recently introduced:
- Cilium Mesh: allows for the easy connection of Kubernetes clusters with existing infrastructure across hybrid clouds
- Tetragon: an eBPF-based open source security solution that provides visibility to and enforces runtime behavior within an application and on the network.
- Isovalent Enterprise: an enterprise distribution of Cilium and Tetragon
Cisco said the acquisition will bolster its secure networking capabilities across public clouds, building on its Cisco Security Cloud vision for an AI-driven, cloud delivered, integrated security platform. The Cisco Security Cloud enables customers to abstract security controls from multicloud infrastructure to provide advanced protection against emerging threats across any cloud, application or workload.
“Together with Isovalent, Cisco will build on the open source power of Cilium to create a truly unique multicloud security and networking capability to help customers simplify and accelerate their digital transformation journeys,” said Jeetu Patel, executive vice president and general manager of Security and Collaboration at Cisco. “Imagine in today’s distributed environment – of applications, virtual machines, containers and cloud assets – having security controls with total visibility, without hindering networking and application performance. The combination of Cisco and Isovalent will make this a reality.”
“Cisco is committed to nurturing, investing in, and contributing to the eBPF and Cilium open source communities,” said Stephen Augustus, Head of Open Source at Cisco. “Isovalent’s team will join Cisco’s deep bench of open source governance and technical leadership to solve complex cloud native, security, and networking challenges. Their knowledge will accelerate innovation across the business and help further strengthen the Cisco Security Cloud platform to meet the growing demands of our customers.”
- Isovalent, which is based in Cupertino, California, was founded in 2017 by Dan Wendlandt and Thomas Graf. In terms of funding, Isovalent has successfully raised a total of $69 million over two rounds of funding. The latest funding round was a Series B, which took place on September 7, 2022. The company has attracted a notable group of investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Mango Capital, Mirae Asset Capital, Thomvest Ventures, M12, Grafana Labs, Google, Cisco, and SV Angel.
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