Cisco has completed the acquisition of Luxtera, a privately held semiconductor company that uses silicon photonics to build integrated optics capabilities for webscale and enterprise data centers, service provider market segments, and other customers. Cisco plans to incorporate Luxtera’s technology across its intent-based networking portfolio, spanning enterprise, data center and service provider markets.
Cisco paid $660 million in cash and assumed equity awards for the acquisition of Luxtera.
According to Cisco, the emerging class of distributed cloud, mobility, and IoT applications is creating an unprecedented strain on existing communications infrastructure. The combination of Cisco's and Luxtera's capabilities in 100GbE/400GbE optics, silicon, and process technology will enable customers to build future-proof networks optimized for performance, reliability, and cost.
Integration of Luxtera and Cisco's optical transceiver portfolio will broaden Cisco's offering of 100GbE and 400GbE optics, and as system port capacity increases from 100GbE to 400GbE and beyond, optics plays an increasingly important role in addressing network infrastructure constraints, particularly density and power requirements.
"With Cisco's 2018 Visual Networking Index projecting that global internet traffic will increase threefold over the next 5 years, our customers are facing an exponential demand for internet bandwidth," said David Goeckeler, executive vice president and general manager, Networking and Security Business at Cisco. "Optics is a fundamental technology to enable this future. Coupled with our silicon and optics innovation, Luxtera will allow our customers to build the biggest, fastest and most efficient networks in the world."