Cisco snaps up streaming-data startup Perspica

Cisco today announced plans to acquire San Jose-based startup Perspica, a company that specializes in using machine learning to analyze streams of data.

Cisco says it will integrate the Perspica technology into its AppDynamics product, which provides network and application monitoring and analytics.

One of the reasons it was attracted to Perspica is because of the company’s ability to monitor data in real-time, Cisco says. Being able to process data as it’s created or very soon afterwards can speed the time that end users are able to gain insights from the data, the company says. “Perspica is known for its stream-based processing with the unique ability to apply machine learning to data as it comes in instead of waiting until it’s neatly stored,” says Bhaskar Sunkara, VP of Engineering at AppDynamics.

The acquisition of Perspica comes less than a year after Cisco purchased AppDynamics. Cisco says AppDynamics’ detailed reporting capabilities of network and application activity is invaluable to emerging networking use cases, such as intent-based networking (IBN). IBN uses a deep understanding of what’s happening in the network with advanced automation and orchestration tools to implement policies on the network and maintain the desired state of the network.

Cisco has said its Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI), combined with its Tetration analytics and AppDynamics monitoring create an IBN for data centers. Perspica will be another component integrated into AppDynamics. “At its foundation, the more data you pull in, the greater the need is to act on it in real time, and act on it at scale early in the process so you can decide what’s noise and what’s the signal,” said AppDynamics CEO David Wadhwani about Perspica’s impact on Cisco’s broader IBN strategy.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.