Cisco in Deal Talk With Splunk

Networking giant Cisco, which maintains a huge campus and employs thousands in RTP, could be making its largest acquisition ever.

Cisco has made a “takeover offer” of more than $20 billion for Splunk, a software maker.Such a deal would be the largest ever for Cisco, which spent some $7 billion to buy Scientific Atlanta in 2005.

Under UNC-CH graduate Chuck Robbins, who replaced longtime CEO John Chambers in 2015 and became Cisco chair in 2017, Cisco has reorganized to become more software and services focused as part of an aggressive acquisition strategy.

Splunk is based in San Francisco. “Splunk’s extensible data platform powers unified security, full-stack observability and limitless custom applications,” the company says.

However, a deal might not happen.

The offer was made recently and the companies aren’t currently in active talks, some of the people said