Network systems company Cisco has agreed a $415m deal to acquire Whiptail, a US-based, solid state data storage provider. Whiptail is privately held and backed by investors including flash memory maker SanDisk.
Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay $415m in cash and retention-based incentives in exchange for all shares of Whiptail. The acquisition is expected to complete in the first quarter of fiscal year 2014.
The acquisition is intended to strengthen Cisco’s Unified Computing System strategy, responding to increased demands being placed on traditional storage array systems.
Whiptail is backed by SanDisk, which invested in a $31m series C financing round for the company in December 2012. The round was joined by venture firms Ignition Partners, RRE Ventures and Spring Mountain Capital, with Silicon Valley Bank providing debt financing. Reportedly, Cisco also participated in the series C round. Whiptail was established in 2009.
Paul Perez, vice president and general manager, Cisco Computing Systems Product Group, said: “We are focused on providing a converged infrastructure including compute, network and high performance solid state that will help address our customers’ requirements for next-generation computing environments. As we continue to innovate our unified platform, Whiptail will help realize our vision of scalable persistent memory which is integrated into the server, available as a fabric resource and managed as a globally shared pool.”