Cisco has acquired application monitoring firm Epsagon in a multi-million dollar deal that will see the firm’s technology integrated into Cisco’s products and services. 

Joining the company’s Strategy, Incubation and Applications division, the Epsagon acquisition will expand Cisco’s advanced full-stack observability strategy with its expertise and technology. 

The startup, which has offices in New York and Tel Aviv, distributes tracing systems for modern applications and services, including containers and server-free environments. 

The value of the acquisition hasn’t been publicly disclosed, although Globes reports the figure stands at $500 million. Epsagon itself has raised $30 million to date, according to Pitchbook, with Globes estimating its value at between $100 to $200 million.

As the app market’s competitive landscape expands, Cisco’s senior VP and chief strategy office Liz Centoni said, businesses must fast-track their innovation timelines or they’ll be overtaken by their rivals. 

Businesses are doing this by adopting cloud-native technologies, microservices and containerised components on a massive scale. This has led to a rise in the complexity of IT environments, with firms like Epsagon stepping in to track the performance of the components that make up a firm’s digital infrastructure. 

“Cisco’s approach to full-stack observability gives our customers the ability to move beyond just monitoring to a paradigm that delivers shared context across teams and enables our customers to deliver exceptional digital experiences, optimise for cost, security and performance and maximise digital business revenue,” Centoni said.

“Epsagon’s technology and talent align well with Cisco’s vision to enable enterprises to deliver unmatched application experiences through industry-leading solutions with deep business context. By contextualizing and correlating visibility and insights across the full stack, teams can improve collaboration to better understand their systems, solve issues quickly, optimise and secure application experiences and delight their customers.”

Cisco’s core software as a service (SaaS) platforms includes AppDynamics, ThousandEyes and Intersight which all feed into the full-stack observability strategy. This provides observability across the entire stack of apps, network infrastructure and security with real-time insights correlated across domains, and integrated with business context powered by AI and machine learning.