Cisco Systems Inc. plans to buy Topspin Communications Inc., a privately held provider of server fabric switches for grid and utility computing, in a $250 million deal. Server fabric switches connect servers into a grid, and then provide network and storage connectivity to that server grid.
Topspin’s product line will extend Cisco's data center switching solutions to include InfiniBand-based server switching, Cisco says, and also will complement the equipment maker’s network switching and storage technologies.
Cisco and Topspin expect the deal to close sometime in the fourth quarter.
"The widespread adoption of server architectures such as blades, grid computing, and clustered applications is driving an emerging market opportunity within the data center,” says Luca Cafiero, senior vice president, data center, switching and wireless technology group for Cisco. “As our customers build out these new computing environments, it is important that we deliver server networking technologies to fit their needs.”
Topspin products target data centers where customers are deploying high-performance grid and utility computing, clustered enterprise applications, and/or server virtualization.
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