Acacia designs and manufactures high-speed, optical interconnect technologies for webscale companies, service providers, and data centre operators.
Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco has agreed to acquire Acacia for $2.6 billion. Cisco plans to support Acacia's existing customers and new customers that want coherent optics, digital signal processing / photonic integrated circuit modules, and transceivers for use in networking products and data centres..
"By innovating across software, silicon and optics, Cisco is reinventing every domain of the network with our intent-based architectures," said David Goeckeler, executive vice president and general manager of Cisco's networking and security business. "With the explosion of bandwidth in the multi-cloud era, optical interconnect technologies are becoming increasingly strategic. The acquisition of Acacia will allow us to build on the strength of our switching, routing and optical networking portfolio to address our customers' most demanding requirements."
Cisco offers a portfolio of optical systems to support webscale, service provider, enterprise, and public sector customer segments. Acacia's technology will be able to support Cisco's optical systems portfolio and will allow customers transitioning from chassis-based systems to pluggable technology to simplify operations and reduce network complexities.
"Coherent technology has been a game-changer for optical networking and continues to evolve with the deployment of pluggable coherent optics," said Raj Shanmugaraj, president and chief executive officer, Acacia. "Upon close, Cisco and Acacia will continue to serve and support existing Acacia customers. By integrating Acacia technology into Cisco's networking portfolio, we believe we can accelerate the trend toward coherent technology and pluggable solutions while accommodating a larger footprint of customers worldwide."
The acquisition is expected to close during the second half of Cisco's FY2020, subject to customary closing conditions and required regulatory approvals. Upon completion, Acacia employees will join Cisco's Optical Systems and Optics business within the networking and security business under David Goeckeler.
