Om Malik of GigaOM, among others, are reporting today that Cisco has finally announced their $330 million acquisition of WiMAX vendor Navini Networks. Navini will join fellow acquirees (?) Linksys, Sipura Technology, and a few others in the growing Wireless Networking Business Unit.
This is an interesting buy for Cisco, because WiMAX isn’t in widespread use here in the U.S., and it’s not really clear when it will be. This could put them ahead of the curve once WiMAX becomes more prevalent. This integration will be one to watch over the coming months, because they still haven’t fully leveraged their 2003 acquisition of Linksys. I’ve heard that some people liken the Cisco/Linksys deal to GM’s 1990/2000 acquisition of Saab, but that’s a story for another day…
Navini marks Cisco’s 10th acquisition for 2007 (closing in 2008), and the 124th overall acquisition.
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It’s also like the 15th company backed by Mike Goguen at Sequoia Capital to be acquired by Cisco Systems. That guy is on fire.