Cisco Announces Intent to Acquire ParStream

Cisco announced its intent to acquire ParStream, a privately-held company based in Cologne, Germany that provides an analytics database that allows companies to analyze large amounts of data and store it in near real-time anywhere in the network.

ParStream's highly specialized database is built for IoT environments. It allows customers to compute and analyze large amounts of data at the edge in real-time, with minimal infrastructure and operating costs at the edge. Using innovative compression and indexing capabilities, ParStream's technology helps customers access data faster and at scale, rapidly analyzing and filtering billions of records and getting information to the business in near real-time.

This acquisition complements Cisco's current data and analytics portfolio, improving its ability to provide analytics at the edge of the network, where data is increasingly being generated and in huge volume.  Analytics are at the heart of Cisco's strategy for a hyper distributed intelligent infrastructure.

ParStream's technology, for example, can help a renewable energy company track and monitor thousands of wind turbines at once by providing the information to optimize the performance of each turbine and quickly adjust to changing environmental factors, like wind direction and temperature. Instead of sending this data to a centralized server, now a company can store the data at the edge of the network, closer to the turbines and sensors, and track results even across a highly distributed network. Real-time access to data derived from the connected equipment can lead to benefits like decreased equipment downtime through predictive maintenance, increased productivity, and historical analysis of environmental patterns.

ParStream was part of the Cisco Entrepreneurs in Residence start up program. The ParStream team will be integrated into Cisco's Analytics and Automation portfolio, joining the Data and Analytics Group. The acquisition is expected to close in the second quarter of fiscal year 2016.

Keywords: Internet of Things (IoT), Analytics, Distributed Intelligent Infrastructure, Compression, Indexing, ARC Advisory Group.