Cisco To Buy Orchestration Software Startup Tail-f

Cisco said Tuesday that it is acquiring Tail-f Systems, a Swedish network orchestration software supplier, for $175 million to bolster its cloud strategy.

Tail-f specializes in multi-vendor orchestration software for traditional and virtualized networks, according to Cisco. The software is designed to help service providers automate network provisioning and management.

Cisco plans to add Tail-f's employees to its cloud and virtualization group. The deal, which includes cash and retention-based incentives, is expected to close in the fourth quarter.

"Tail-f will help achieve our goal of aiding customers in their quest to simplify and automate network management, enabling service innovation and deployment acceleration," Hilton Romanski, senior vice president and head of business development at Cisco, wrote in a blog post. "The acquisition of Tail-f accelerates Cisco's cloud virtualization strategy of delivering software that increases value to our customers' applications and services, while supporting Cisco's long-standing commitment to open standards, architectures, and multi-vendor environments."

Tail-f's customers include major service providers such as AT&T and Deutsche Telekom. In February, AT&T named Tail-f as one of the networking suppliers for its Domain 2.0 strategy.

Romanski praised Tail-f's work in developing and implementing the NETCONF protocol and YANG data modeling language, which he called the "leading industry approach to simplifying and automating networks."