Cisco Announces Intent to Acquire Springpath – Now Complete

UPDATE — September 22, 2017:  I am pleased to announce we have completed the acquisition of Springpath, Inc. today. A hearty welcome to the Springpath team members!

Our customers and partners in the data center space are frequently asking for solutions that can help them simplify management operations and power more applications. With that in mind, I’m pleased to share that Cisco intends to acquire Springpath, Inc. – a leader in hyperconvergence software.

Cisco’s relationship with Springpath began back in 2012, when we first met Founder and CTO Mallik Mahalingam shortly after he had started the company, together with Krishna Yadappanavar.  Mallik and Krishna had a great vision on how Springpath was going to revolutionize the data center through its innovative Springpath data platform. We stayed connected with the team as they executed on this vision and in 2015 decided that Cisco Investments would lead Springpath’s Series C financing round, coupled with a joint go-to-market agreement.

This collaboration with Springpath led to the 2016 launch of Cisco’s HyperFlex product, the industry’s first fully integrated hyperconverged infrastructure system. By co-engineering Springpath’s software with the Cisco Unified Computing System, we have delivered a fully integrated platform with HyperFlex and innovation at all layers of the data center stack. This provides customers with the convenience and benefit of getting all the HyperFlex software and hardware from a single vendor.

The hyperconverged systems market is projected to be a $7.6 billion opportunity by 2021 according to IDC, and is one of the fastest growing segment in the data center space (Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Converged Systems Tracker, 1Q17). Cisco has generated significant momentum with Hyperflex over the last year, garnering more than 1800 customers.  We are excited to now welcome Springpath to the Cisco team and as one company, we will further accelerate our business in hyperconvergence.

This acquisition is one more example of Cisco’s shift towards providing more software-centric solutions. The Springpath team will join the Computing Systems Product Group led by Liz Centoni. We expect the acquisition to be completed in the first quarter of fiscal year 2018.