Cisco Acquiring Joulex for $107 Million

Cisco today announced its intention to acquire privately held startup JouleX for $107 million. The deal is set to officially close in the fourth quarter of 2013.

JouleX was founded by Tom Noonan in 2010 after his successful exit from Internet Security Systems (ISS). ISS was sold to IBM for $1.3 billion in 2006.

JouleX builds power management technology for data centers and enterprises. From the company’s inception, it has had a partnership with Cisco. Cisco’s EnergyWise effort, which got started in 2009, is all about making networking IT greener and more power efficient.

“With network-enabled devices increasing exponentially, our partners and customers are asking for this solution today to operationalize their energy management capabilities in the network and reduce cost,” Faiyaz Shahpurwala, Cisco’s senior vice president for Industry Solutions, said in a statement. “JouleX’s cloud-enabled, agent-less architecture will allow our partners and customers to quickly deploy this solution at scale in addressing their IT energy management needs.”

Once the deal is closed, the plan is for JouleX employees to become part of the Connected Energy Solutions team within Cisco’s Industry Solutions Group, which is led by VP and GM David Goddard.

It’s not yet clear how long JouleX CEO and founder Tom Noonan will stick with the company under Cisco’s leadership. In a 2010 video interview, Noonan explained why he left ISS after the IBM acquisition to found JouleX. With the IBM ISS deal, Noonan noted at the time that his commitment was to stay with the company until it was integrated, which took approximately 18 months.

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at Datamation and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.