Cisco Acquires Assets of Rival Router Vendor

Cisco said it plans to purchase intellectual property and select assets from Procket for $89 million in cash. Procket, a five-year old Milpitas, Calif.-based company, started as a chip maker and now sells routing hardware and software products aimed at the service provider market. Under the deal, expected to close in Cisco's fiscal 2005 first quarter, Cisco also plans to absorb most of Procket's engineering team.

"The addition of Procket's engineering team to Cisco offers a unique opportunity to accelerate development of silicon and software across Cisco's next-generation routing portfolio," said Mike Volpi, senior vice president and general manager of the Routing Technology Group at Cisco, in a statement.

Procket counts several former Cisco employees among its ranks, including president and CEO Roland Acra, who previously served as the senior vice president and CTO of Cisco's Service Provider Group.

The move comes as the router market is beginning to heat up.

San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco last month reinvigorated its high-end router line with the launch of CRS-1, a long-awaited, next-generation routing technology for service providers that is expected to ship in July.

Competitor Juniper Networks this week said it plans to compete with Cisco in the enterprise access router market with a new line of products slated to ship in September.