• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, March 10, 2016

Cisco Systems, a leading manufacturer of network equipment, has acquired a search engine. While the financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, Rowan Trollope, VP of Internet of Things and Collaboration Group at Cisco, shed light on the company's integration plans.

Synata, a San Francisco-based search technology startup, will fold into Cisco Spark within the Internet of Things and Collaboration Group at Cisco. Synata provides the ability to search "highly" encrypted data in the cloud. Spark was previously used by Apple to facilitate interactions between iPhones and desk phones in environments deploying Cisco conferencing hardware and software, according to the company.

The software allows users to search on local- and cloud-based applications simultaneously from one platform, Cisco says. It will also work within Spark’s encryption capabilities so users can collaborate and search with privacy and control of their data.

Synata will support Spark’s encrypted search capabilities by making it faster and more predictive and intuitive, Trollope wrote in a blog post.

Synata also gives Cisco's Spark platform graph search, allowing users of the communication platform to search across the index and the connections people have made with one another while interacting across the platform.

A thank you note on Synata's Web site remains. Synata CEO Pat White wrote that the company officially shut down two days ago and the entire team and its intellectual property were now part of Cisco.

"All Synata accounts have been closed and made permanently inaccessible as we have terminated all services and securely deleted your search index," White wrote.

Cisco's customers have been asking the company's management team to keep developing search capabilities within Cisco Spark.