Cisco has announced its intent to acquire privately held Cloupia, a California-based software company that automates converged data centre infrastructure, allowing enterprises and service providers to simplify the deployment and configuration of physical and virtual resources from a single management console. Cloupia's infrastructure management software enhances Cisco's Unified Computing System (UCS) and Nexus switching portfolio with a single "pane-of-glass" view into the automation of compute, network, storage, virtual machine and operating system resources. When combined with Cisco's UCS Manager, Cloupia allows enterprises and service providers to seamlessly manage pools of computing power, network services, storage and virtual machines as a unified whole or in order to deploy and deliver IT services more rapidly and at lower costs. Upon the close of the acquisition, Cloupia employees will be integrated into Cisco's Data Centre Group. Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay approximately USD 125 million in cash and retention-based incentives in exchange for all shares of Cloupia. The acquisition is subject to various standard closing conditions and is expected to be complete in the second quarter of Cisco's fiscal year 2013.
