Cisco Systems Inc. recently announced hat it has agreed to acquire privately held Lightwire Inc. for $271 million.
Lightwire, which is headquartered in Allentown, Penn., and has offices in Santa Clara, develops optical interconnect technology for high-speed networking applications. Cisco believes Lightwire’s optical technology will help its service provider and data center customers meet the growing demands of video, data, voice, mobility and cloud services.
“The acquisition of Lightwire will support our data center and service provider customers as they manage the continuing deluge of network traffic alongside tight capital and operating budgets,” said Surya Panditi, senior vice president, Cisco Service Provider Networking Group. “The Lightwire acquisition builds on Cisco’s existing optical networking expertise and complements Cisco’s 2010 acquisition of CoreOptics, a designer of coherent digital signal-processing solutions and application-specific integrated circuits for high-speed optical networking applications,” said Ned Hooper, Cisco’s chief strategy officer.
Lightwire employees will join Cisco’s Transceiver Modules Group Business Unit and Supply Chain Operations Group.
The acquisition is expected to be complete in the third quarter of Cisco’s fiscal year 2012.
