Cisco Acquires Network Management API Specialist Jahi

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Cisco Systems Inc. will pay $16 million in cash and assumed options for Jahi Networks Inc., a specialist in programming interfaces for network management.

Jahi, which operates out of San Jose, Calif., and India, provides network management "appliances," although its products are software programming interfaces that augment command-line interfaces and APIs.

Jahi was founded in 2003 and has 20 employees. It will be managed by Cliff Meltzer, senior vice president of Cisco's network management technology group, and will be part of that group.

Meltzer said Jahi provides an automated way to communicate with a wide variety of networking devices. Jahi's software creates a "virtual device" view of a network, allowing a single point of control for network operators. It also allows enterprises and service providers who write their own scripts and network management applications to interact with Cisco devices.