Cisco is on an Acquisition Roll and it Just Bought One of its Vendors for $139 Million

Cisco announced Tuesday it is acquiring California-based Net Maintenance, Carlsbad, for $ 139 million.That sum includes cash for the company and "retention-based incentives" for executives, Debbie Dunnam, Cisco senior vice president of Success Global Customer, said in a blog.Cisco has been a customer of MaintenanceNet since 2009, says Dunnam. MaintenanceNet makes software that allows manufacturers to easily keep track of customer warranty and service agreements.

Your software does things like automatically send renewal notices to discover that customers bought items that are not covered by their service plans, and so on. It's claim to fame is that it not only works to the manufacturer of the products, like Cisco, but may be used by distributors manufacturer partners. Cisco has a gazillion of them.

MaintenanceNet be added to the overall success of the client (GCS) organization of Cisco, Cisco by utilizing MaintenanceNet. Is the founder of CEO Scott Herron said in a blog that Cisco will not formwork service for its own internal use. It will continue to support customers. MaintenanceNet clients include Panasonic, CDW, Ingram Micro. Lenovo, many others.

Net maintenance was not exactly a start. It was founded in 2004 and clicks over a decade without taking VC money. In 2014, he raised $ 12 million Kayne Partners.This is Cisco's second acquisition in as many weeks. Last week, Cisco bought another software company OpenDNS, or $ 635 million.

A couple of years ago, the outgoing CEO of Cisco, John Chambers, Cisco made waves when he said he would not buy more US companies until the country changed the tax code that allows you to use Cisco stock of cash abroad to pay for them, paying little-to-no taxes on that money. US companies are not taxed in cash abroad until they want to spend on things like home purchases or dividends, then pay the full corporate rate of 35%. Chambers has been an outspoken critic of that tax policy.

Cameras never carried out the threat, breaking that year to spend $ 2.7 billion security company Sourcefire purchase. But Cisco is still buying a lot of companies abroad for a while.That seems to have gone out the window from 2015. So far this year, Cisco has bought five companies, all software companies (one Cisco area where you really need the expertise of homegrown), especially in the US