Event
Summary
Cisco Systems
said it has agreed to buy start-up Tasmania Network Systems in a stock deal
worth $25 million. Cisco said it will integrate Tasmania's content network caching
software into its current Cache Engine 500 product line. Network caching speeds
up content delivery and overall network performance by storing frequently accessed
information, like Web pages, closer to the end user, which decreases download
times. The acquisition marks Cisco's latest buy after the company announced
plans to accelerate its buying spree and make more than 20 purchases in the
next year.
Under the terms
of the agreement, Cisco said it will exchange its common stock worth $25 million
for all outstanding shares, warrants, and options of Tasmania.
Market
Impact
Although Cisco
has already had a web caching product (the Cache Engine 500) on the market for
over a year, it has been conspicuously absent from various web caching tests
(Data Communications magazine's "Web Polygraph", IRCache BakeOff,) over the
past year. In contrast, Tasmania Network's NetHawk software caching product
yielded the best price/performance figures in the "Web Polygraph" testing (http://polygraph.ircache.net/Results/dcomm-1/)
at $15.37/rps1 (lower is better), also measured as 65 rps/K$ (higher
is better). We believe the combination of the two products will result in a
better offering than either presently has.
Naturally,
this will lead to modest consolidation, as NetHawk functionality is folded into
the Cache Engine product. In addition, Cisco has stated that they expect to
acquire some 20 companies over the next year, continuing their buying spree.
We expect Cisco to increase their presence in the caching market over the next
12-24 months
User
Recommendations
In addition
to the expected benefits of NetHawk on a Cisco platform, users will benefit
from having a stable vendor (Cisco) from whom they can buy high performance
caching software. This product will generally be of more interest to clients
with larger bandwidth demands and considerations, such as ISP and large corporate
environments where network bandwidth is at a premium.
1rps:
Requests Per Second