* Other news: ECI spends $6 million on option to acquire Chiaro; Juniper unveils TX Matrix
Cisco has confirmed in a 10-Q filing an intention to acquire router start-up BCN Systems of Santa Clara, for $45 million to $195 million, provided BCN meets certain technical milestones. Cisco invested an undisclosed amount of seed funding to BCN, which is believed to be developing the company’s next-generation enterprise and service provider edge routers using technology Cisco obtained from its acquisition of Procket Networks’ assets earlier this year. BCN sounds like another Cisco “spin in” effort, similar to Cisco SAN switch vendor Andiamo, in which a company seeds a start-up with the option to buy the company once development of the funding company’s product is near completion. http://www.nwfusion.com/edge/news/2004/1202cisrtr.html
Cisco has confirmed in a 10-Q filing an intention to acquire router start-up BCN Systems of Santa Clara, for $45 million to $195 million, provided BCN meets certain technical milestones. Cisco invested an undisclosed amount of seed funding to BCN, which is believed to be developing the company’s next-generation enterprise and service provider edge routers using technology Cisco obtained from its acquisition of Procket Networks’ assets earlier this year. BCN sounds like another Cisco “spin in” effort, similar to Cisco SAN switch vendor Andiamo, in which a company seeds a start-up with the option to buy the company once development of the funding company’s product is near completion.https://www.nwfusion.com/edge/news/2004/1202cisrtr.html Another start-up has landed the all-important big (pocketed) brother. Core router maker Chiaro Networks is buddying up to ECI Telecom, which will become the exclusive distributor for Chiaro’s Enstara router in exchange for $6 million and an option to acquire the Richardson, Texas, start-up. Such skin-in-the-game arrangements are vital to the survival of telecom start-ups these days, and several have been brokered over the past three years. Chiaro has a couple of customers in the U.S., several trials internationally and now a potential – indeed, likely – acquirer.
https://www.nwfusion.com/edge/news/2004/1202chiaro.html
Just as Chiaro landed its sugar daddy, Juniper Networks upped the ante even further at the core router table. Just days before Cisco’s annual worldwide analyst bash, Juniper unveiled its anticipated TX Matrix, an optical backplane designed to connect four high-end T640 core routers into a 2.5T bit/sec system. TX, which was on the radar screen since the introduction of the T640 two-and-a-half years ago, is likely to have tongues wagging at the Cisco conference about the status of Cisco’s own multiterabit switch interconnect for its new 1.2T bit/sec CRS-1 routers. If Cisco gets defensive, maybe it can just point out that Juniper’s TX comes in at only half of its promised initial capacity — four routers at 2.5T bit/sec instead of eight routers at 5T bit/sec.
