With about a dozen such acquisitions in the plan for the next 12 months, stories like this one are becoming commonplace, but Cisco Systems Inc has landed its latest quarry in the form of Netsys Technologies Inc. Cisco has agreed to pay about $79m in shares for the privately-held company, with which it already has a strategic reseller agreement and in which it has has held a minority equity interest since February 1995. Cisco expects the agreement will result in a one-time charge against after- tax earnings of between $0.05 or $0.06 per share in its second quarter of fiscal 1997 to write off in-process research and development. Netsys is a Palo Alto-based network management and performance analysis software company, and Cisco wants it to give customers the ability to simulate their network design so as to optimize capacity and performance. Netsys’s 50 or so employees will become part of Cisco’s Central Engineering team under current Netsys CEO Herb Madan. Separately, Cisco launched a new family of managed, Fast Ethernet hubs called the FastHub 300 Series. The stackable product line is intergrated with existing Cisco Fast Ethernet product lines, including LAN switches, routers and Fast Ethernet products. They are out this month, with prices from $125 per port, depending on configuration.
