Cisco Acquires ThousandEyes For Network Monitoring

Cisco Systems has confirmed it will acquire privately held ThousandEyes, as it seeks to improve network visibility in a world increasingly reliant on Internet-connectivity.

Cisco pointed to the world’s increasing dependence on digital services in its official announcement of the acquisition, as the world emerges from unprecedented nationwide lock-downs caused by the Coronavirus pandemic.

ThousandEyes is a well established San-Francisco-based firm, having been founded in 2010. The firm provides “Internet intelligence at a scale and accuracy never seen before. In a time when every meeting is held and every document is shared through connected applications, the need for ThousandEyes technology has never been so high.”

Network insight

Cisco did not disclose the purchase price of ThousandEyes, but Bloomberg reported the deal was worth as much as $1 billion.

So what is Cisco gaining? Well, ThousandEyes’ technology warns admins when a user’s experience is less than ideal, and can pinpoint where those failures were caused. It utilises thousands of agents deployed throughout the Internet, to gain “an unprecedented understanding of the Internet and grows more intelligent with ever deployment.”

“With ThousandEyes, AppDynamics and Cisco SD-WAN technology, we will have the ability to improve the performance, reliability and scalability of all the applications on which we depend so much,” said Cisco.

“The ThousandEyes acquisition will enable deeper and broader visibility to pin-point deficiencies and improve the network and application performance across all networks your business relies on by enabling end-to-end visibility when accessing cloud applications,” said Cisco.

Cisco said that it incorporate ThousandEyes’ capabilities in its AppDynamics application intelligence portfolio, as well as SD-WAN, WebEx and Meraki families “to enhance visibility across the enterprise, internet and the cloud.”

There is no word on layoffs or redundancies at this stage.