Cisco Closes Isovalent Deal To Further Boost Cloud Networking, Security

The tech giant’s latest closed acquisition highlights the shift that Cisco is making in favor of providing secure, multi-cloud networking.

Cisco Systems has closed its acquisition of Isovalent, a leader in open source, cloud-native networking and security as the tech giant moves further down the path of providing secure, multi-cloud networking.

Isovalent’s technologies will become “a cornerstone” of the Cisco Security Cloud strategy, the company’s cloud-based, AI-powered security platform approach. Now combined, the two companies will build edge protection for every workload on every cloud, according to San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco.

Cisco has spent the last two years moving to a platform approach to security and away from offering point products from its security portfolio. The company has said that now with the addition of Splunk, it will be one of the largest security providers in the market.

Cisco in the second half of 2023 invested an incremental $100 million in its partners around security, the company said at the time.

No financial terms of the deal were disclosed although The Information reported Cisco paid $650 million in cash for the company. The deal was first announced in December.

Isovalent, founded in 2017, was built by the creators of Cilium, open-source, cloud-native software for security and observing network connectivity between workloads. The company is also a major contributor to open-source observability platform eBPF. Cisco, for its part, said that it is committed to nurturing and supporting eBPF, Cilium, Tetragon, and cloud native open-source communities.

The Isovalent team will join Cisco’s Security Business Group under the leadership of Jeetu Patel, Cisco’s executive vice president and general manager of security and collaboration.