Cisco buys Topspin for $250 M

By agencies   |   Saturday, 16 April 2005, 19:30 IST
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MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA:Cisco Systems Inc. has acquired server networking equipment provider Topspin Communications Inc. for $250 million in cash and options. Two Indian Krish Ramakrishnan and Avtar Saini are on the board of the firm. While Ramakrishnan is the CEO, Saini looks after the Asian operations. Mountain View, Calif.-based Topspin sells programmable server switches used in systems from vendors including Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM and Sun Microsystems Inc. Cisco said that the acquisition will strengthen its ability to provide customers with networking technology that lets them build data centers in a flexible, grid-like fashion. Cisco expects Topspin's products will complement its network and storage switching lines, including its Ethernet-based Catalyst switching platform for the Internet and MDS switches for storage area networks. Privately held Topspin is one of the top providers of switches designed to knit servers into a grid, adding network and storage in the process. The switches also provide a backbone for utility computing, server virtualization and clustered applications. Cisco said in a statement that it would use Topspin's technology to help customers build out grid computing in their data centers. Once relegated to research and development, grid computing is catching fire among commercial entities. Enterprises, service providers and universities are employing grids of computers to run high-performance applications. Topspin's devices shuttle data across networks using InfiniBand, a well-regarded technology that never quite caught on with vendors looking for speedier data transfer. While some detractors have said InfiniBand is a wash, Haff noted the technology has had success in high-performance computing and shows promise in niche areas like database clusters. Cisco expects Topspin's products will complement its network and storage switching lines, including its Ethernet-based Catalyst switching platform for the Internet and MDS switches for storage area networks (SAN). Separately, Cisco said new network address translation capabilities for its Inter-Virtual SAN routing (IVR) feature give administrators the ability to merge legacy SANs and share resources across heterogeneous SANs. Also, Fiber Channel Network Address Translation (FC NAT), an enhancement of Cisco's existing IVR function for SAN Routing, is available as part of the Cisco MDS 9000 SAN-OS 2.1 operating system. This tool lets customers route between multi-vendor SANs without address limitations.