Cisco to buy security-products firm for $830 million
January 5, 2007
Cisco Systems Inc., San Jose, Calif., said it agreed to pay $830 million in cash and stock to acquire privately held IronPort Systems Inc., a maker of antispam and antivirus security products. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of fiscal 2007. Analysts said the acquisition will help Cisco further shed its image as solely a maker of networking infrastructure gear, and capitalize on products and services that utilize the network itself. Cisco, which makes the routers, switches and other devices used to link networks and direct traffic on the Internet, was already dominant in the network-security arena. But executives at the company said they were keenly interested in entering the $2-billion-plus messaging-security market and profiting further from the need of businesses to protect their applications from growing Internet threats. - AP
