Cisco to acquire IronPort Systems for $830 million

US based network hardware industry giants Cisco has said that they are acquiring e-mail and Web security firm IronPort Systems Inc.

This deal is worth around $830 million and it would help Cisco to get into the growing industry of anti-virus and anti-spam software products.

This is just the latest move from Cisco to complement its main product line of routers and switches. The company said in a statement that this deal would help them offer corporate clients a more comprehensive range of products.

Richard Palmer, senior vice president of Cisco’s security technology group spoke about this deal: “IronPort has a reputation on filtering where they know the reputations of people who are sending e-mails or generating Internet traffic. We can use that information at Cisco for the routers and switches and firewalls to filter traffic.”

Daniel Ives, an analyst at Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co. added on this latest Cisco acquisition: “The theme of consolidation is a key theme that we expect to continue in the security software space, as the larger vendors must continue to get ‘bigger and better’.”

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