What did Cisco buy? A look at its '06 acquisitions

Greenfield Networks

Cisco got geeky with its seventh buyout of 2006: Greenfield Networks, which makes chips for metro Ethernet switches. This was the first pure-networking acquisition of the year for Cisco, and one that might seem odd, since the vendor was tops in the US$837 million global metro Ethernet market for the second quarter of 2006, according to research firm Infonetics.

With carrier Ethernet sales expected to double by 2009, Cisco decided not to chance letting second-place Alcatel or Juniper with its recently announced Metro Ethernet gear creep up in the market. Greenfield makes Ethernet switch silicon and switch fabric components that do things Cisco's technology can't. One piece of Greenfield silicon can process packets for 24 Gigabit Ethernet ports, or 3 10G Ethernet ports onto a single chip -- and boasts IPV4 and IPv6, MPLS, and Layer 2/3 IP VPN packet processing features. The start-up's switch fabrics are also impressive: 12 10Gbps Ethernet fabric ports, with up to 240Gbps of total switching capacity. Expect Cisco to put these powerful chips into compact metro Ethernet gear, and possibly enterprise Ethernet gear, in 2007.

Tivella

Cisco's announced plan to buy out Tivella will stand as the company's final acquisition of the year, unless there is a last-minute deal. The Tivella acquisition was as curious and out-of-character as Cisco's first deal of the year. This focus this time was -- of course -- on IP video technology; and the company it bought -- you guessed it -- was a Cisco technology partner prior to the deal.

Tivella makes tiny network appliances, about the size of a cable modem, which plug into an Ethernet network and stream video content to digital billboards and displays: Think flight arrival/departure screens in airports or flat-panel monitors in retail stores showing advertisements. This gadget, called Piccolo, sits under or behind a flat-panel plasma display or LCD and connects via standard audio/visual inputs. An Ethernet jack, or WLAN option, ties the device back to the network for centralized control. Tivella also makes software to control the distribution of content on digital signs attached to a network.

Clearly, Cisco is tired of its gear humming away in obscurity in wiring closets and data centers. Earlier this month, Cisco demonstrated a version of its Piccolo-based Digital Media Player (which it plans to release in 2007), with Cisco's new logo prominently displayed on the front of the box.