SAN JOSE, CA--(MARKET WIRE)--Nov 1, 2007 -- Cisco® (NasdaqGS:CSCO - News) today announced an agreement to acquire Securent, Inc., a leading provider of policy management software for enterprises. Securent's scalable, distributed policy platform allows enterprises to administer, enforce, and audit access to data, communications, and applications in heterogeneous IT application environments. Securent is privately held and based in Mountain View, Calif.

Securent's software will enable Cisco customers to protect and secure valuable application data regardless of vendor, platform, or operating system while still allowing ubiquitous access to the content workers and their collaborative communities need to be productive. By delivering policy from the network, Cisco will simplify entitlement decisions for all communications, collaboration and other third party applications.

"As enterprises shift to service-oriented architectures and adopt technologies such as Unified Communications and Web 2.0 based collaboration, there is a rising need for control over access to distributed enterprise resources," said Don Proctor, senior vice president, Cisco's Collaboration Software Group. "Securent's software offers enterprises a single point of control to define and manage entitlements across applications and data. This capability is well aligned with Cisco's Service-Oriented Network Architecture (SONA), enabling policy decisions to be delivered as a network service across multiple applications, platforms, and delivery models."

Securent has 57 employees and is headquartered in Mountain View, CA with development operations in Hyderabad, India. Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay approximately $100 million in cash and assumed options. The acquisition is subject to various standard closing conditions and is expected to close in the second quarter of Cisco's fiscal year 2008. Upon close of the transaction, the Securent team and technology will move into Cisco's Collaboration Software Group, led by Don Proctor, Senior Vice President.

This will be acquisition No. 125 for Cisco.

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