Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) is continuing its track of building up its software solution set by acquiring a minority stake in Seattle-based Parallels, a developer of hosting and cloud service enablement and desktop virtualization, on Thursday.
The vendor's relationship with Parallels began in 2009, when Almaz Capital/Cisco Russia Fund I, Cisco's venture capital initiative, made an investment in Russia-based Parallels and Apollo.
Parallels was founded in 1999 by Russian-born computer scientist Serguei Beloussov and now has over 900 employees throughout the world, with offices in Asia Pacific, Europe and the Middle East.
By investing in Parallels, Cisco said in a release that it will be able to "strengthen inter-company collaboration towards accelerating customer adoption of Parallels cloud service delivery products with Cisco cloud and data center infrastructure solutions."
In addition, Parallels and Cisco plan to expand their joint development, marketing and industry initiatives.
Although Parallels did not reveal the terms of the deal, Cisco will get a seat on Parallels' board.
Cisco's move with Parallels reflects the company's ongoing dedication to target the growing data center and cloud market segments with a mix of hardware and increasingly software-based solutions. While the data center segment is still relatively new for Cisco, the segment overall grew 61 percent to $417 million in Q3.
For more:
- see the release
- Reuters has this article
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