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Cisco announced its intent to acquire privately held Fluidmesh Networks, a New York-based industrial wireless backhaul systems provider. Fluidmesh’s mission critical wireless solutions map well with Cisco’s expanding industrial wireless portfolio, particularly in applications such as high-speed rail, mass transit, or at large-scale distributed sites, such as ports or urban settings, where signal strength can be challenging. The products will be rebranded under the Cisco moniker once the acquisition is completed, and all Fluidmesh personnel are expected to be retained.
Complementary Strengths and Go to Market Strategies
The Fluidmesh acquisition will assist Cisco in scaling its industrial wireless portfolio in key areas, such as complementary technology, served industries, expanding use of industrial wireless in mobile applications, and access to OT-oriented channels and partners. Fluidmesh solutions are designed to ensure zero loss of data transfer at speeds in excess of 300 Km/h for on-the-move mission critical assets and applications, while at the same time providing cost-efficient, low maintenance operation.
Incorporation into the portfolio will extend Cisco’s capabilities in industries with mobile assets and applications where reliable and resilient backhaul transmission is mission critical. The Fluidmesh solutions are already frequently deployed with Cisco’s industrial wireless solutions in a variety of transportation segments, such as rail, subways, and shipping ports. Fluidmesh also brings access to a more OT-oriented global system integrator channel relative to Cisco’s more IT oriented customer, further broadening the wireless portfolio’s reach to key customer segments, partners, and end users.
Incorporation into the Cisco Industrial Wireless Portfolio
The Fluidmesh acquisition is just the latest example of Cisco’s moves to strengthen its overall industrial wireless and industrial network infrastructure portfolios. In 2019, the company introduced the Cisco Catalyst IW6300 Heavy Duty Series Access Point with Class 1 Division 2 certification for oil and gas, the ESW6300 Series Embedded device, and the Industrial Wireless 3700 series. The capabilities of these new industrial wireless devices reflect Cisco’s efforts to bring its entire network infrastructure portfolio under a single 
networking infrastructure umbrella, one which will ultimately extend to the Fluidmesh offering. Incorporation of the Fluidmesh products should be relatively straightforward, given their incorporation of a standard WiFi 5 chipset and common wireless OS.
Cisco industrial wireless products co-exist with Cisco’s extensive industrial wireline infrastructure portfolio as components of the company’s solution-focused Validated Designs for specific applications, e.g., transportation, mining or smart cities. This approach is designed to enhance network performance, reliability, and security via end-to-end network management, policy implementation, and location analytics that can be used by both IT and OT. The two companies have already worked together on Cisco Validated Designs (CVDs) for rail transportation.