* Cisco picks up BCN Systems for router software
Cisco late last week acquired privately held BCN Systems of Santa Clara, a maker of routing software that Cisco funded.
Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay approximately $34 million in cash for all outstanding equity interests of BCN. In addition, the acquisition price may be increased by as much as $122 million depending on the degree to which certain development and product milestones are met after close.
BCN’s software will eventually be incorporated across Cisco’s routing portfolio. Cisco says the software is complementary to Cisco’s existing operating system platforms and will further improve the reliability and feature sets of those platforms.
In the future, this architecture will also allow additional hardware acceleration for QoS and security, Cisco says.
There was some speculation that BCN was developing the next generation of Cisco’s 7600 and 10000 series routers. Sources say BCN is developing software for a session controller blade for Cisco routers to link carrier VoIP networks together.
Cisco would not disclose any details on the BCN software.
BCN’s 45 employees will become a part of Cisco’s Routing Technology Group, under senior vice presidents Prem Jain and Mike Volpi. BCN Systems was founded in April 2004.
