Cisco Tuesday confirmed its intent to acquire NewScale, a privately-held provider of software used for efficient provisioning of cloud services. Cisco plans to use newScale's tools to complement and expand its existing services options for customer-led cloud management and automation.
San Mateo, Calif.-based NewScale, which was founded in 1999 and named to CRN's Data Center 100 list earlier this year, focuses on self-service, service catalog and life-cycle management software for enterprise IT and private/hybrid cloud computing. It boasts more than 2 million users worldwide, according to the company.
NewScale's software products are used by enterprises and MSPs for efficient provisioning of resources across physical, virtualized and cloud-based IT environments. Among its recent releases was the newScale Service Portal, announced in December, which provides a web-based, "single pane of glass" services dashboard for customers' various newScale and third-party management applications.
The newScale acquisition is the latest in a series of increasingly frequent cloud computing moves by Cisco, which touted the monetization of cloud computing services as a major focus at the Cisco Partner Summit in New Orleans earlier this month. It was there that Cisco debuted its three-track Cloud Partner Program -- an official channel program designed to put wood behind Cisco's cloud computing arrow -- and declared all Cisco partners have cloud computing opportunities available to them.
NewScale also follows two other recent, services-based acquisitions by Cisco. In early December, Cisco bought network services virtualization vendor LineSider Technologies. Soon after came Cisco's January pickup of network configuration and change management product specialist Pari Networks.
Financial terms of the newScale deal were undisclosed. Cisco expects the acquisition to be completed in the second half of its fiscal 2011. Once acquired, newScale will report into Cisco's Advanced Services group. Further details on newScale's executive team weren't provided.
"Cloud computing represents a major shift in the evolution of the Internet, and as more customers migrate from traditional IT infrastructures, the need for rapid self-provisioning and efficient management becomes increasingly critical," said Parvesh Sethi, senior vice president, Cisco Services, in a statement. "With the acquisition of newScale, Cisco will be able to accelerate the deployment of cloud services through a service catalog and self-service portal that allows customers to easily manage their IT infrastructures."
