9/14/2004 -- Scan the headlines of the business or technology press and you might think you were stuck in a time warp.

That’s because Cisco Systems Inc. is back to its old acquiring ways: The networking giant recently made two multi-million dollar acquisitions in the space of a week, bringing its overall tally to five such acquisitions for the year.

That’s a comeback performance for Cisco, which — in the years prior to the dot.com implosion — was widely viewed as a force to be reckoned with in the mergers and acquisitions department.

First, last week, Cisco ponied up $128 million for NetSolve Inc., a provider of remote network and IT infrastructure management services. Among other offerings, NetSolve provides monitoring and management services for IP communications networks, security software and devices, and WANs and LANs, officials said. NetSolve also markets a secure, Web-based portal view that gives customers real-time visibility into their infrastructure. Not surprisingly, then, Cisco officials said NetSolve's services will let the networking giant and its channel partners offer customers real-time monitoring of Cisco products.

"With the acquisition of NetSolve, Cisco gains an experienced team, proven process and intellectual property, providing the foundation to cost effectively enable our channel partners to accelerate the adoption of remote network and IT infrastructure management services," said Paul Mountford, senior vice president of worldwide channels with Cisco, in a statement.

This week, Cisco agreed to pay $55 million for Dynamicsoft Inc., a developer of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) solutions for telecommunications services providers. Dynamicsoft’s SIP-based products service providers to deliver advanced IP voice, data and multimedia services to customers.

Officials say Cisco will use the Dynamicsoft technology to strengthen its own broadband communications solutions portfolio with the ultimate goal of letting service providers build "subscriber-aware" networks that can deliver next-gen VoIP applications and services.

“Dynamicsoft's portfolio of carrier-class infrastructure products, combined with Cisco's softswitch capabilities, will allow service providers to quickly develop and deploy highly scalable 'subscriber-aware' IP communications services using voice, video, messaging, presence and other real-time capabilities,” said Charles Giancarlo, Cisco’s senior vice president CTO, in a statement. “SIP-based, intelligent IP networks represent the future of networking and will have a profound impact on the way we communicate, both at work and at home.” -Stephen Swoyer