
Cisco buys Sourcefire for $2.7 billion - maskofsanity
http://www.scmagazine.com.au/News/351040,cisco-buys-sourcefire-for-27-billion.aspx
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josh2600
That's cool, but what I want to know is: when's Cisco gonna buy RedHat? I
think that's a blockbuster acquisition that would make a ton of sense for
Cisco. I think it's a question of price and whether RedHat would sell.

Time will tell.

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zimbatm
In terms of company culture, Cisco and RedHat don't seem very aligned. Cisco
is all proprietary and RedHat mostly doing free software.

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josh2600
IMHO, if you poke around in the Nexus 7K gear, it looks like RHEL or CentOS
underneath. Cisco's always been very private about the kind of Linux they're
running on their gear, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was modified RHEL.

RedHat does free Software, but their culture is services, which aligns well
with Cisco. You don't get to be a billion dollar business without making some
money somewhere.

Free software != $0 revenue.

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Klaughton
This exemplifies Cisco's build/buy/partner model.The acquisition of Sourcefire
adds a team with deep security DNA to Cisco and will accelerate Cisco’s
security strategy of defending, discovering, and remediating advanced threats.
In addition, Sourcefire’s open source model will strengthen and accelerate
Cisco’s ability to build a strong ecosystem of security partners who can bring
real time threat intelligence and innovations to customers through integration
with it's technologies and platforms (OpenDaylight, SDN, etc...). Good move at
a reasonable price (~29% premium to closing).

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casca
Sourcefire's flagship product is Snort which is an excellent Open Source
Intrusion Detection System. Their business model is to offer management tools,
rules and support on Snort for enterprises.

Their 2012 earnings were $223.1m which was a 35% increase over 2011. With cash
and near-cash of around $200m, this is a purchase price of around 10x annual
revenue.

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quesera
That's an impressive business, I didn't realize they were doing so well.

Cisco obviously has a long history of buying network appliance (no caps)
companies, including those that sell competing products. Sometimes the product
lines are incorporated, sometimes they're run in parallel, and sometimes
they're squashed (after Cisco's internal EOL promissory schedule, hopefully).

What Cisco does _not_ do often is buy companies with open source products.

I think it's clear that Cisco needs to make big changes to their organization.
I wonder if this signals that they are heading toward an IBM-style services
model, or an Oracle-style _scorched earth_ model...

