Cisco invests an additional $13.3 million in VMware by taking away 500,000 shares from Intel In a surprising move last week, Cisco announced that it was going to increase its equity stake in VMware. The company is going to purchase an additional 500,000 shares of VMware Class A common stock. The more interesting piece of this information is that Cisco’s new purchase is coming from shares held by Intel. And the amount? It looks like the price tag comes in at around $13.3 million. Looking back to July 2007, Cisco originally took an interest in the virtualization giant to the tune of an investment of $150 million just before VMware’s IPO. With this latest equity stake, the networking giant will own approximately 1.7 percent of VMware’s total outstanding common stock.According to Cisco, the purchase is intended to build on the strong inter-company collaboration between Cisco and VMware in the adoption of the companies’ virtualization products and solutions that address the intersection of virtualization and networking technologies. In September 2008, VMware announced its new Virtual Datacenter OS (VDC-OS) roadmap during the VMworld 2008 event. Cisco also unveiled some interesting technology at the show, its Nexus 1000V distributed virtual software switch. The new Cisco technology could be the first step toward VMware fulfilling the networking aspect of their VDC-OS initiative.The increased investment and the new technology line showcase the tightening relationship between these two companies. Software Development