Cisco Systems announced late Tuesday that it was buying San Francisco application monitoring company AppDynamics for $3.7 billion in cash and stock, just days ahead of AppDynamics’ planned initial public offering.
AppDynamics makes software that allows application makers to monitor their products’ performance. CEO David Wadhwani will continue to lead the company as a new business unit within Cisco’s Internet of Things and Applications division. That division is overseen by Senior Vice President and General Manager Rowan Trollope.
“The combination of Cisco and AppDynamics will allow us to provide end-to-end visibility and intelligence from the network through to the application; which, combined with security and scale, and help (information technology) to drive a new level of business results,” Trollope said in a statement announcing the deal.
“We hope to keep them as a unified business,” said Rob Salvagno, Cisco’s head of mergers and acquisitions. “We believe that’s critical to help maintain and continue to execute on the momentum they have.”
AppDynamics had 1,186 employees as of October, according to a company filing, most of them in San Francisco. It was poised to launch the first initial public offering of a Bay Area venture-backed tech company in 2017. The company was anticipating raising more than $193 million in the…