News Feature | September 2, 2016

Cisco Expands Boundaries With Acquisition Of ContainerX

Christine Kern

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

Cisco

Move marks Cisco’s first acquisition into the rapidly emerging container market.

Cisco announced its intent to acquire ContainerX, Inc., marking Cisco’s first foray into the rapidly emerging container market. In a blog post, Cisco’s Rob Salvagno explained the move will help Cisco provide simple, secure, and interoperable solutions capable of integration across the data center stack with existing infrastructure.

As ZDNet writes, container technology is used to deploy and manage applications in the cloud and has become a trending method recently with Docker, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and VMWare all competing for the space.

No terms were disclosed for the deal. ContainerX was founded less than two years ago, and has proven itself to have great potential in the enterprise-class container management technology field.

Salvagno stated, “With ContainerX, Cisco is continuing to invest in innovative technology and talent to help our customers in their transition to cloud native architectures using containers. This clearly supports our broader strategy to build and deliver secure hybrid cloud infrastructure, platforms, and services that offer our customers the freedom to choose the best environments and consumption models for their traditional and cloud native applications.”

“This is certainly a new area for Cisco, but they're trying to get in during the early days versus waiting for the market to be mature,” Kent MacDonald, vice president of converged infrastructure and network services at Long View Systems, told CRN. Long View Systems is a Calgary, Alberta-based solution provider and Cisco Gold partner. “They're getting in while the market is still young, which will allow Cisco to add their innovation [and] should bode well for channel partners.”

This announcement closely follows news Cisco would lay off 5,500 employees as part of a restructuring plan that aimed to shift focus into higher growth areas. This acquisition is clearly a move in that direction.