Networking equipment company Cisco Systems Inc has acquired a small stake in Seattle-based software developer Parallels, Parallels said on Thursday.

Parallels said in a statement that Cisco has bought about 1 percent of the company and added that the stake sale does not rule out a possible initial public offering by the provider of desktop virtualisation and cloud service delivery software.

The company was founded in 1999 by Russian-born computer scientist Serguei Beloussov and employs more than 900 people worldwide.

"We are looking at all possible ways to ensure liquidity options: dividend payouts, IPO, mergers and acquisitions," Parallels' press service said.

The price of the deal with Cisco

The Cisco logo is displayed at the technology company's campus in San Jose, California February 3, 2010. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith (© Robert Galbraith / Reuters)
has not been revealed, but Cisco will get a seat on the Parallels board of directors, the press service said.

At the end of last year the company, which does not disclose financial results, announced that it aims to expand its cloud business and solutions based on the Unified Data Center platform by 20-26 percent annually in the next three years.


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