Cisco has decided to discontinue its Invicta data-storage hardware line, marking the latest in business units dropped from the roster by incoming CEO Chuck Robbins.
The routing vendor began selling data storage solutions when it acquired Whiptail in 2013 for $415 million.
Whiptail focused on developing equipment to store data on flash memory versus disk drives. When it purchased the company, Cisco said that Whiptail's technology would enable it to improve the performance of its server systems.
Despite the technology's potential, Cisco announced on Friday it would discontinue the Invicta product line as part of a broader effort to increase its focus on other business lines.
A Cisco spokeswoman told The Wall Street Journal that a number of Invicta's employees would be let go from the company, but would not provide details on how many would be cut.
According to Tim Stammers, a senior analyst at 451 Research, said that Invicta had a number of technical problems. The Cisco spokeswoman acknowledged that it had frozen shipments while working to resolving Invicta's issues.
The shuttering of the Invicta line is just one of two new moves Robbins has made to Cisco. The vendor also announced on Friday that it sold its set-top box business to Technicolor SA for $600 million. Similar to Invicta, Cisco entered the STB business in 2006 via its $6.9 billion acquisition of Scientific Atlanta.
For more:
- WSJ has this article
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