Riverbed Technology signed a definitive agreement to acquire Xirrus. The acquisition of the privately-held company will expand Riverbed’s SD-WAN and cloud networking solution Riverbed SteelConnect with the integration of a robust and proven suite of advanced, high density and cloud-managed Wi-Fi solutions, offering Riverbed customers and partners the power of unified connectivity and policy-based orchestration that spans the entire distributed network – WAN, LAN/WLAN, data center and the cloud.
“Xirrus is a strategic acquisition for Riverbed, providing us with a leading enterprise-grade Wi-Fi solution, and enhancing SteelConnect to deliver an unmatched SD-WAN offering that will help further fuel our growth in this hot market,” said Jerry M. Kennelly, Riverbed Chairman and CEO.
“Legacy approaches to network management have become completely untenable. IT must move beyond the days of managing individual network devices using arcane CLI commands and scripts and instead move to software-defined approaches that are based on global policies, automation and orchestration,” said Paul O’Farrell, SVP of the Riverbed SteelConnect, SteelHead and SteelFusion Business Unit.
“Together with Riverbed, we embrace a tremendous opportunity to create the world’s first SD-WAN solution that covers the core to the edge of the network,” said Shane Buckley, CEO of Xirrus.
“A key facet of network transformation is convergence at the enterprise branch as IT/network managers look to unify network operations and management across wired and wireless LANs and WANs, all within the context of a cloud-enabled architecture,” said Rohit Mehra, Research Vice President, Network Infrastructure, IDC.
