Cisco today said it will acquire Acacia Communication for about $2.6 billion in a move to boost its optical networking portfolio.

Acacia, which is an existing Cisco supplier, makes high-speed optical interconnect products for webscale companies, service providers, and data center operators.

“With the explosion of bandwidth in the multi-cloud era, optical interconnect technologies are becoming increasingly strategic,” said David Goeckeler, executive vice president and general manager of Cisco’s networking and security business, in a prepared statement. “The acquisition of Acacia will allow us to build on the strength of our switching, routing and optical networking portfolio to address our customers’ most demanding requirements.”

Acacia is a publicly traded company based in Maynard, Massachusetts. The companies expect the acquisition to close during the second half of Cisco’s fiscal 2020. At that time Acacia employees will join Cisco’s optical systems and optics business within the networking and security business under Goeckeler.

In a blog post about the acquisition, Bill Gartner, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Optical Systems and Optics Group, says Acacia’s coherent optics technology will advance Cisco’s intent-based networking and help cloud and service providers address challenges in data center interconnect, metro, and long-haul networks. These customers are looking to increase capacity on existing fiber infrastructure, drive down costs, and automate their networks, he says.

One of the ways network operators can simplify operations and lower costs is to change their network architecture, moving from chassis-based technology to pluggable optics.

This means that “functions that were previously delivered in separate chassis-based solutions in a separate optical layer will be available in a pluggable form factor as part of the IP layer,” Gartner wrote. “Acacia uses silicon photonics as the platform for integration of multiple photonic functions for coherent optics. The greater levels of integration increase the density and reduce the cost of the coherent optics.”