The holiday shopping season is in high gear, but consumers aren't the only ones opening their wallets. Cisco has been on its own buying spree lately, picking up two software companies and a WLAN vendor in the month of November.

Of the three companies recently purchased -- Cariden, Cloupia and Meraki -- Cariden is the most striking. Cariden's core software product could best be described as path and network analysis software. It gathers configuration data from the network devices, then maps data into a network graph, performing mathematical modeling to deliver predictive analytics and resource mediation of the carrier network.

Cariden has solved key analytical problems such as bandwidth structuring, resource prediction and path weakness in the carrier networks. In discussions with Cariden earlier this year, it was clear to me its technology could readily be adapted as an SDN application.