Cisco invests in Insieme

networking start-up by the name of Insieme, with an option to buy the firm for up to a further $750 million secured, ITProPortal reports.

Insieme was actually founded by three Cisco employees, and was designed to be purchased by the computer networking giant, a procedure known as a "spin-in".

“Insieme's product development efforts are complementary to that of Cisco's current and planned internal investments,” Bloomberg quotes Cisco as saying in a memo.

“These types of investments have strongly benefited Cisco in the past, and we will continue to look for similar ways to complement our internal development capabilities.”

According to Telecom Lead, the investment in Insieme signals Cisco's efforts to deepen expertise in a new area of computer networking where software handles the tasks typically done by more expensive networking hardware.

Furthermore, Cisco is set to buy ClearAccess, a provider of software to service providers for provisioning and management of residential and mobile devices.