Cisco Systems has plans to acquire transponder vendor CoreOptics Inc. for $99 million in cash plus incentives. As reported to this Light Reading story, this is the company’s the first major optical move in years, and several years since Cisco released any major optical product.
“And then there’s the fact that Cisco is making an optical move in the first place. It’s been more than a decade since the acquisition of Cerent, the startup that yielded the ONS 15454 platform, and several years since Cisco released any major optical product.
“‘They’ve been in the optical space very quietly, and they really haven’t made that full step forward. People have asked, ‘Are you serious about this? Are you not serious about this?’ ‘says Eve Griliches, an analyst with ACG Research . ‘They’ve got a strong optical team in the company. They just haven’t had strong optical products recently.'”
