In its bid to expand its cloud-based networking offerings, networking tech giant Cisco has agreed to acquire San Francisco-based cloud computing company Meraki for an estimated $1.2 billion in cash.

Meraki offers midmarket customers easy-to-deploy on-premise networking solutions that can be centrally managed from the cloud.

“The acquisition of Meraki enables Cisco to make simple, secure, cloud-managed networks available to our global customer base of mid-sized businesses and enterprises. These companies have the same IT needs as larger organizations, but without the resources to integrate complex IT solutions,” said Rob Soderbery, Senior Vice-President, Cisco Enterprise Networking Group. 

“Meraki’s solution was built from the ground up optimized for cloud, with tremendous scale, and is already in use by thousands of customers to manage hundreds of thousands of devices.”

Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay approximately $1.2 billion in cash and retention-based incentives to acquire the entire business and operations of Meraki.