Cisco to make a takeover bid for Riverbed? Could that ever happen? Cisco Subnet blogger Larry Chaffin 
believes so. In his latest blog post, Larry also predicts that Nortel could be bought by either Juniper, AT&T or Qwest. Larry writes: "Riverbed is looking more and more like a takeover target, they have good numbers even in this down economy and the stock is down just because of the markets. This is a prime time for Chambers to take over his biggest pain right now other than Juniper and ProCurve."
I can't think of Cisco ever making a hostile takeover bid. That just doesn't appear to be its style. But perhaps the potential ownership of Riverbed's WAN acceleration product could be too good to pass. What do you think? Head over to Larry's blog and put in your 2 cents.
More from Cisco Subnet:
* Close to tears at Cisco's shareholder meeting
* Brocade CEO: Everywhere Cisco is now, Brocade will be there!
* Adventures in IPv6 Web Hosting
* Predictions: Riverbed, Nortel get purchased, plus more
* Under the hood: Cisco unified communications
* All about VMware virtualization
* Cisco News and Review podcast
* Jimmy Ray Purser Networking Geek to Geek podcast
Go to Cisco Subnet for more Cisco news, blogs, discussion forums, security alerts, book giveaways, and more.
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Cisco is too arrogant to
Cisco is too arrogant to ever admit that their WAAS product line has always been and will always be inferior to Riverbed so the purchase will unlikely happen. On the other hand, Juniper with their reputation of overengineering their products for no compromise performance, survivability, carrier class stability and superior unified interface is a better match for Riverbed. A Cisco killer combination would be:
Juniper + Riverbed + Aruba/Meru Networks + Zen Virtualization + Nortel
HAHA. You said Nortel. And
HAHA. You said Nortel. And all credibility immediately went out the window!
Likely
Cisco hasn't engineered anything of note for a long time. They make shrewd acquisitions and Riverbed would be such an acquisition. While I don't agree with the first comment per se that Cisco is too arrogant to purchase Riverbed (and risk admitting WAAS is garbage) I do think that Riverbed is past the development/business cycle that Cisco prefers for their acquisitions.
I see this as a likely acquisition hindered only by Cisco's potential ego check (Riverbed is big enough that Cisco can't pretend to have "invented" any of Riverbed's products/tech).
Cisco and Riverbed
All the comments posted are spot on for why Cisco would never buy Riverbed. If I may add a superfluous comment it's that the two technologies for WAN acceleratiion are completely different. Cisco has built it's product and marketecture on the fact it "isn't" Riverbed. Hard for Cisco to say we've built a better product and then turn around and buy the guys who do it all together differently. It's like saying Cisco would buy F5.
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