Cisco Systems Inc on Tuesday announced its first foray into the data storage market, saying it would pay $415 million to acquire privately held storage system maker Whiptail. Cisco said it will pay cash and incentives for the acquisition, expected to close in the first quarter of 2014.Whiptail, founded in 2008 and based in Whippany, New Jersey, makes storage systems based on flash memory chips, which allow data to move through servers with greater speed and efficiency as well as higher volume.One flash server can manage the workload of a number of servers on traditional hard disk drives.Cisco, one of the biggest providers of X86 servers, said Whiptail's technology was a good fit allowing Cisco to extend its converged infrastructure, combining components such as servers, data storage devices, networking equipment and software into one offering.
Cisco Systems, Inc. designs, manufactures, and sells Internet protocol (IP)-based networking and other products related to the communications and information technology (IT) industry and provide services associated with these products and their use. Shares of CSCO traded higher by 0.98% or $0.235/share to $24.16. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $16.68 and as high as $26.49. On average, 34518100 shares of CSCO exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 14741625.
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