$135 million acquisition paves way for Cisco to tighten the connection between its networking gear and Web Services.
Feb 22, 2007 - By Amy Larsen DeCarlo

Cisco is making a play to improve its SOA (service-oriented architecture) position with acquisition of XML equipment vendor Reactivity.


Cisco's Reactivity acquisition is a logical extension of the company's SONA architecture. There's a move towards delivering appliances that provide out of the box application-integration services. Reactivity delivers such an appliance, but it's hardly the only one. IBM-DataPower and Cast Iron Systems offer similar solutions and Alcatel-Lucent demonstrated such an appliance at its user conference in Paris last week. The device is expected to ship by midyear. Network Computing will take an in-depth look at these appliances this summer.

David Greenfield
NWC Editor

The company disclosed plans to purchase privately held Reactivity, a maker of gateway appliances businesses use to secure and manage XML-based services.

The Reactivity gateways mediate a variety of protocols, security standards and document formats to speed the provisioning of new Web services crucial to businesses trying to realize the benefits of dynamic Web 2.0 applications, such as wikis and forums.

The acquisition gives Cisco an element previously missing from its product catalog to enable Web services.

The vendor says its decision to buy Reactivity is evidence of its desire to expand its ANS (Application Networking Services) Advanced Technology segment, which is the cornerstone to its SONA (Service-Oriented Network Architecture) strategy. Cisco touts ANS's role in giving customers shared application-aware services to extend the performance, reliability and security of its Web services applications across a Cisco infrastructure.

Cisco is reportedly paying about $135 million in cash and assumed options for the appliance vendor. The purchase is expected to close at the end of the April, in the third quarter of Cisco's fiscal year 2007.

Network Computing took a close look at Cisco's SONA strategy in this feature story: Roadmap: Cisco's AON: The Mythical Middleware Menagerie - http://www.networkcomputing.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=192501714