Cisco → Cisco To Aquire OpenDNS

»blog.opendns.com/2015/06 ··· opendns/

edit: subject

May want to adjust the subject of your thread to "Cisco To Aquire OpenDNS."

Here's the Cisco Press Release for this.

quote:

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The OpenDNS team will join the Cisco Security Business Group organization led by David Goeckeler, senior vice president and general manager. Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay $635 million in cash and assumed equity awards, plus retention based incentives for OpenDNS. The acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter of fiscal year 2016, subject to customary closing conditions.

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Wonder how Cisco sees this aquisition working out in the longterm...

Regards

its going to be pretty typical of cisco acquisitions. they see the value in the dns and filtering -- possibly to bolster their cws product as they push commodity internet circuits towards the branch for direct internet access (and using dmvpn with pfrv3 for tunnels back to the head-end).

its a niche play for cisco. they saw the opportunity and leapt at it.

q.

Assimilation of functionality in to an existing product line.

Doesnt always pay to roll your own.

done

I guess $635 million isn't that much for Cisco. Not sure how this will really help them sell that many extra units, in the long run.

As for OpenDNS itself, my opinion has always been: meh. I've seen them resolve things differently than the rest of the world does, and no I'm not talking about malware sites. I'm a DNS purist and expect to get the true results for any query.

Finally, I gotta wonder how many people think OpenDNS is a "good thing" simply because of the "Open" in the name. (It has nothing to do with open source, but I bet a lot of people think it does.)

Two things, a) I'm wondering if John Chambers sees something here that I don't in OpenDNS' offering, and b) what's
Cisco's longterm view on this, if any? Looks like this is brought up by the posters in the Security forum -- and rightly so they point out how this could turn into another "Linksys by Cisco" brand.

Rereading the original OpenDNS blog post

quote:

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We believe we can move faster and with more impact by leveraging Cisco’s scale and resources in a way that we would be unable to do on our own or with any other partner.

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Emp. mine.

Yes, Cisco is big, but WHERE would OpenDNS fit into the grand "One Cisco" vision?

Linksys isn't around anymore, so no default "DNS by OpenDNS" possibility there.

Cisco Small Business? Not sure about that one.

Cisco Meraki? Possibly as default DNS servers? Roll in a "DNS subscription" into the licence fees as another source
of annual tributerevenue?

Overall as part of Cisco's Web Security offerings? They've got IDS / IDS with Sourcefire, web reputation with Scansafe
and Ironport, email security with Ironport, the only thing lacking in the UTM matrix is AV and DNS, so in that sense the
OpenDNS acquisition makes sense.

Agree with you Wily_One that $625meg is chump change for Cisco, though OpenDNS is more a "it works well enough" for me.

My 00000010bits

Regards

chambers is on his way out. given the long-term transition strategy that cisco is following -- this was a joint decision with chambers and robbins.

q.

When was that announced, and HOW long has Chambers been around for? I'd almost swear Chambers dates back to the mid90s
and the dotcom boom, unless I'm mistaken.

Regards

chambers has been around for 20 years or so -- taking over for john morgridge (who is an awesome guy to drink beers with).
the announcement happened in late march/early april -- but the vetting/interview process was going on for nearly 2 years or so (if not longer). at cisco live this year, chambers gave his last keynote and introduced robbins. i believe chuck takes over at the end of cisco's fiscal year (the end of this month).

q.

20 years... in an IT company no less

And yeah, I recall Chambers' immediate predecessor. Don't ask me why, but I picked up "Making The Cisco Connection"
by David Bunnell a few years ago... if there ever was a Rah-Rah Cisco Presskit, this book'd be the posterchild for it.

Though I will say Chambers has quite a bit to be proud of given his endeavors pre-Cisco.

Regards

...just checked the book, p.43 "When John Chambers first arrived at Cisco in 1991,..." 24years.

Regards