Timely analyst thought pieces on issues pertaining to digital media, home networks, and consumer electronics.

Just got off a call with Cisco, who talked about their announced intention to acquire Pure Networks. I think this makes sense for both parties, since Linksys has been increasingly focusing on giving consumers tools with which they can manage their home networks. At the same time, Pure Networks, which has long been the independent market leader in software management tools aimed at consumers to help them oversee, troubleshoot and monitor their home network, will likely benefit from the internal resources that Cisco can bring to bear as well as being part of a large home networking market hardware vendor and its associated channels to market.

I've followed Pure for some time, and watched as the company has undergone significant changes in management and strategy. Some of its original founders were from Intel, and Intel itself had been an investor in the company. Over the years, Pure Networks has continued to evolve its business strategy, looking for ways to monetize a software application that, while valuable, has been difficult to get a significant revenue stream from since much of the value is given away in the free, scaled-down software that consumers can get on the website. Part of their strategy has been to partner with both hardware providers and broadband service providers to provide them with software that consumers can use to help manage their network, as well as provide a way for broadband service operators and hardware vendors to reduce the amount of support calls. In the past, Pure has partnered with Zyxel, D-Link and, of course, Linksys.

Its partnership with Linksys was in part to help develop the the foundational management engine for its LELA (Linksys EasyLink Advisor) software. The company helped develop the software and Linksys/Cisco worked to put its own customized user-interface on top as well as optimize it for use with Linksys routers. Part of the interest from Linksys has been the development of the HNAP (Home Network Administration Protocol) management protocol, which is a SOAP based protocol that can be implemented in a router's firmware to help with network topology discovery as well as allow for allow for management of devices by other devices on the network.

One of Cisco/Linksys's goals is to continue to push for the licensing of HNAP, even to other network hardware vendors. They also expect to look for partnerships to allow the home network management console (such as Network Magic and LELA) be a application management tool.

Look for more analysis of this acquisition in coming days...

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