SAN JOSE, Calif. — Looking to increase its presence in the storage-area-networking (SAN) market, Cisco Systems announced today (Aug. 20) that it will acquire SAN switch developer Andiamo Systems (San Jose, Calif.). In conjunction with this acquisition, Cisco has also released a set of intelligent switches for the SAN market that were developed by Andiamo.
"The acquisition of Andiamo supports Cisco's strategy to enter into new growth markets, such as storage networking," said John Chambers, Cisco's president and CEO.
Cisco's is taking Andiamo's products to market under the MDS 9000 product tag.
The MDS 9000 intelligent switch family is targeted at fibre channel and iSCSI applications. This family consists of the 9500 series of multilayer directors and the MDS 9216 multilayer fabric switch.
The 9500 multilayer director series is available in 6-, 9-, and 13-slot versions. The fabric switch, on the other hand, is equipped with one fixed slot containing 16 ports of 1- or 2-Gbit fibre channel and one expansion slot for additional ports.
Overall, the MDS 9000 family of products achieves a 1.44-Tbit/s internal bandwidth, support up to 256 ports per switch, and support up to 768 ports per rack. Additionally, this switch family provides virtual SAN (VSAN) capabilities.
To speed the adoption of the MDS 9000 family, Cisco is also launching an SAN interoperability initiative. Specifically, the company is working with Adaptec, ADIC, BMC Software, Hitachi Data Systems, IBM Tivoli, JNI Corp., Netereon, QLogic, StorageNetworks, and Veritas to ensure that equipment and software from these developers works with the 9000 family.
Financial details
In 2001, Cisco entered into agreements that granted Cisco certain rights to acquire Andiamo. The company expects its convertible note to represent 44 percent of Andiamo.
Once the acquisition is completed, Cisco will exchange shares of its common stock for all outstanding shares of Andiamo not already owned by Cisco. Cisco said the final Andiamo purchase price would be based on Cisco's efforts to sell Andiamo products into the SAN market during a three-month period as well as on Cisco's overall sales and market capitalization. A final purchase price will be determined just before the closing of the acquisition, which is expected to close by no later than July 31, 2004.
Pricing for the MDS 9000 family starts at $29,995. The first products in this family are expected to be available in the fourth quarter of 2002.
