Cisco will pay US$1.4 billion ($1.95 billion) to acquire Jasper, a maker of software used to manage and control IoT environments.

Vice president of corporate business development Rob Salvagno said in a blog post that Cisco saw Jasper “as a unique IoT service platform that is disrupting a massive market with strong strategic alignment with Cisco.”

“When I first met [Jasper] CEO, Jahangir Mohammad, I was immediately impressed with his visionary approach to the opportunities available in IoT and his foresight in building a unique business to capture those opportunities,” Salvagno said.

“Ten years ago, when everyone was focused on flip phones and the early adoption of smartphones, Jahangir and team focused their energies on connecting everything else, including GPS units, cars, security systems and point of sale devices.

“This early insight has proved fruitful, and now many millions of “things” are connected to the network and working on Jasper’s platform.

“More importantly, Jahangir and Cisco share a common vision of how to best serve the opportunities presented by IoT by connecting everything in a way that is simple, scalable, and interoperable.”

One of Jasper’s differentiators is that it supplies not only management software but has relationships with “more than 25 mobile operator groups” worldwide, enabling its customers to get connectivity for IoT systems in over 100 countries.

Jahangir will lead a newly formed IoT Software Business Unit under Cisco’s IoT and Collaboration general manager Rowan Trollope.

The acquisition is expected to close in the third quarter of fiscal year 2016.

Cisco said in a statement that the acquisition of Jasper would “allow Cisco to offer a complete IoT solution that is interoperable across devices and works with IoT service providers, application developers and an ecosystem of partners.”

“Cisco will continue to build upon the Jasper IoT service platform and add new IoT services such as enterprise wi-fi, security for connected devices, and advanced analytics to better manage device usage,” the company said.