Cisco Systems Inc has announced the acquisition of privately held IP address management and internet access software developer American Internet Corp for $56m in Cisco shares. Cisco plans to incorporate the company and its 50 employees into its service provider business as soon as the acquisition closes. Boston, Massachusetts-based AIC was formed by in 1995, and so far has received $10m in venture funding, and has existing relationships with Cisco, 3Com Corp, Sun Microsystems Inc and Netscape Communications Corp. AIC released two products in 1997, Network Registrar software for automating the administration of IP-addresses and Access Registrar for management and authentication of dial-in users to ISPs and carriers. Network Registrar can also allocate Classes of Service of network traffic to users by interfacing with directory services, using Lightweight Directory Access Protocol capabilities with directory services software from Microsoft Corp, Netscape, Novell Inc and Sun. These are similar capabilities to those announced by Bay Networks Inc last year, which signed separate agreements with Netscape, Novell, and Microsoft, to add directory services support to its switches and routers for policy-enabled networking. Cisco already had an OEM agreement with AIC to bundle Network Registrar as part of its CiscoAssure Policy Networking software. It therefore seems likely that Cisco will incorporate AICs technology into its network management and Network Operating System IOS. Cisco expects the acquisition to close in early October, and expects to register a $0.03 to $0.06 per share charge for in process research and development in the first quarter of its 1999 financial year.
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