[throwaway2847]

Always sad to see a small player swallowed up by Cisco.

As someone who had the unfortunate experience of going through a Cisco acquisition, there's a familiar pattern.

You can expect that their product roadmap will be torn to shreds as Cisco VPs start streaming in to demand poorly designed integration projects with Cisco's terrible platforms to pad their own resumes. Talent drain ensues as Cisco's low bar for hiring starts to take effect.

The product will keep selling, since Cisco's MO is to leverage its massive sales machine to boost revenue, but there will be little concern for the actual tech itself going forward.

[windexh8er]

Yes, I was really disappointed to see this. I've pointed a lot of PM and folks to Isovalent and Cillium. I really like the idea of eBPF as it solves a lot of the issues that just are poorly handled by middleware/middlebox solutions. I'm not sure why a company like Palo Alto Networks didn't jump on this earlier. I know that this, somewhat, cannibalizes their core business model (middlebox solutions) - however I feel like it would have been more of an additional layer than a complete product line disruption.

At the end of the day this is a great buy for Cisco, but horrible news for customers. I feel as though Isovalent was a bit too early with their mouse trap, but damn is it a good one.

[bastard_op]

That is rather sad, Cisco will ruin another good product bringing it into their mediocre product lines to be marginalized to nothing over time. I've had friends that have come into Cisco through acquisition, they invariably last long enough to vest enough of their stock options and get the hell out as quick as possible, almost always 2 years on the dot. I bet Cisco HR can track that as a reliable metric.

Now the purchase of anyone by Cisco simply signals a death knell for them. Last words generally heard now are "they used to be cool".

[tptacek]

Cisco has been different companies over the last 30 years, and it's not hard for me to believe their current incarnation is drastically more hospitable than their mid-aughts incarnation.

[mikecoles]

Not sure about 30 years ago, but for the last 20 Cisco has been the same. Mostly reliable hardware, but the software side sucks, the licensing and support fees are ridiculous, licensing without a direct connection to their cloud (or a satellite server) is a pain in the arse, sales doesn't even try to be realistic with product capability to product need match, and support is barely above worthless, even with a high-touch contact. Cisco is the same company today as they were back with Ciscoworks and MARS Protego.

[tptacek]

That's pretty clearly not true, since the Sourcefire and Duo acquisitions.

[toomuchtodo]

Teams and founders who have built material value deserve liquidity and an exit. It sucks when they exit to these sorts of orgs, propose a better path that maintains the value but still provides the exit. Customers becoming shareholders through a direct offering comes to mind, but there are other avenues.

[hn_throwaway_99]

At some point I feel like customers are going to be extremely wary of buying anything from smaller players if they know their filet mignon is destined to instantly transform into a turd sandwich the moment the inevitable acquisition occurs.

[toomuchtodo]

Unlikely, the candy is too sweat and the incentives are too short term for anyone to care (on all sides). "Prepare three envelopes."

https://kevinkruse.com/the-ceo-and-the-three-envelopes/

[jen20]

At least it’s not IBM, I suppose!