6/29/2004 -- Today Cisco made its second acquisition in as many weeks, ponying up $82 million for privately-held Actona Technologies Inc.

Founded in 2000, Actona is a developer of wide-area file services software designed to enable data management across geographically dispersed locations. It currently has 48 employees in both the United States and Haifa, Israel.

Officials say that Cisco will use the Actona technology to enhance its Full Service Branch offering with new intelligent network services that enable WAN-optimized file transfer and access. Cisco’s Full Service Branch solution currently provides enhanced wide area network connectivity, advanced network security, IP voice communications, and business application and video acceleration services.

Actona's technology will provide remote users of Cisco’s Full Service Branch offering with close to LAN-speed access to centrally deployed and managed global file systems, officials say. "Actona's technology is a best of breed wide-area file services solution, enabling storage consolidation while providing 'LAN-like' file access over a WAN,” said George Kurian, vice president for Cisco's Routing Technology Group, in a statement.

In addition, Cisco will use the Actona technology assets to extend its solutions for Data Center Storage Consolidation to remote and branch offices.

The upshot, says Kurian, is that the Actona acquisition helps to shore up Cisco’s solution stack in a key emerging market. “The large amount of mission-critical information that resides on employee desktop, laptop computers and workstations needs to be shared, backed up, and archived,” he said. “Today's distributed branch office storage management methods are complex and expensive. Providing intelligent network services so distributed enterprises can centralize file servers and storage, and better protect and cost-effectively manage their remote office data is critical.”

The $82 million acquisition is expected to close in Q1 of Cisco’s 2005 fiscal year. At that time, the Actona team will report to Kurian, Cisco says. -Stephen Swoyer