Of the acquisitions Cisco has completed which ones are horiz

Of the acquisitions Cisco has completed, which ones are horizontal acquisitions and which ones are vertical acquisitions? Which of these acquisitions do you believe have the strongest likelihood of being successful and why?

Solution

In 2012, Cisco acquired NDS group (acquired for $5 billions) who develops TV network software to provide digital solution. As Cisco has customer driven business strategy,the acquisition of NDS complements the particular needs by a customer. This is an example of horizontal acquisition as Cisco builds routers. Hence, this results in effective performance because both of these companies complements each other.

Whereas Cisco purchased another company called Meraki (acquired for $1.2 billions) which provides cloud based optimized solution but meant for medium size customer base.This is an example of vertical acquisition which supports Cisco\'s strategy to provide more software based solutions.