Cisco bolsters network, internet monitoring capabilities with acquisitions

Cisco yesterday announced its intention to acquire U.K.-based SamKnows, a privately held broadband network monitoring company, to increase the reach of its ThousandEyes network intelligence service’s view of the internet into the last mile.

This comes on the heels of last week’s announcement that it plans to acquire Montreal-based Accedian, a network performance monitoring firm specializing in services for cloud service providers (CSPs).

Both acquisitions are expected to close during the first quarter of Cisco’s 2024 fiscal year, which begins Aug. 1, 2023.

SamKnows provides performance monitoring and testing down to the end-user level. One of its services is used by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) in its Measuring Broadband Canada project to gauge actual connection speeds in Canadian homes.

The CRTC said that the data, collected from approximately 5,000 homes across the country, informed its broadband policy-making, allowed Canadians to get a greater understanding of whether internet services from participating internet service providers (ISPs) are delivered at the advertised speeds, and enabled ISPs to improve their networks to better serve existing customers and promote products to potential new customers.

It also provides households in the test with a dashboard where they can view their connection speed and its reliability, and a monthly report indicating whether they’re receiving the level of service they’re paying for.

SamKnows will become part of the network assurance business at ThousandEyes, and Accedian will join the data centre and provider connectivity organization within Cisco Networking and also feed data to ThousandEyes.

“Cisco already provides our customers with an unparalleled view of the connected world with the largest dataset in the industry,” noted executive vice president and general manager, Cisco Networking, Jonathan Davidson, in a blog post about the acquisitions. “With visibility into over 400M endpoints, we have the most comprehensive set of network and user experience data for today’s internet as well as the primary SaaS applications used by businesses, public clouds, and enterprises.

“However, there is a significant step-change in the type and granularity of network data required to keep the lifeblood of our modern economy – and everyday life – flowing. With the acquisitions of Accedian and SamKnows, we are providing a whole new level of network assurance and experience monitoring for our customers.”