Cisco has announced plans to acquire Hungarian container security startup Banzai Cloud, as the networking giant looks to further expand its portfolio of cloud-native technologies.
The deal is expected to close at the end of this quarter for an undisclosed sum and follows hot on the heels of Cisco’s takeover of cloud-native security company Portshift back in October.
Founded in 2017, Budapest-based Banzai Cloud offers a Kubernetes-based platform that is designed to help businesses develop and deploy cloud-native applications.
The firm's assets and employees will now become part of Cisco’s Emerging Technologies and Incubation group, which focuses on incubating new projects for cloud-native networking, security and edge computing environments for modern distributed applications.
In a blog post, Liz Centoni, SVP of Cisco's Emerging Technologies and Incubation group, explained that the move would help the company address the challenges presented by modern cloud-native applications and their environments.
"This team has demonstrated experience with complete end-to-end cloud-native application development, deployment, runtime and security workflows," Centoni said.
"They have built and deployed software tools that solve critical real-world pain points and are active participants in the open-source community as sponsors, contributors and maintainers of several open-source projects.”
The acquisition is the latest move in Cisco's push to grow its cloud security portfolio, following its acquisition of Israeli startup Portshift last month for a reported $100 million.
The Tel-Aviv-based business provides a Kubernetes-based platform to secure containers and serverless applications and will also fall under Cisco’s Emerging Technologies and Incubation umbrella.
"These two cross-border acquisitions are a testament to the globalisation of the cloud-native ecosystem and underscore our commitment to hybrid, multi-cloud application-first infrastructure as the de facto mode of operating IT," Centoni added.
"The Emerging Technologies and Incubation team’s mission is to incubate impactful technologies and to attract, foster and grow the global talent needed to drive innovation and support our customers' digital transformation initiatives.”
