Cisco Systems has put up $68 million in cash to acquire Sipura Technology Inc., a move that will beef up the VoIP engineering wherewithal and technology development of Cisco's Linksys division.

The deal, marking the first acquisition for Cisco's home networking unit, will give Linksys access to Sipura's portfolio of customer-facing VoIP technology . Sipura, via an existing relationship, has supplied analog telephone adapters and routers with integrated voice capabilities to Linksys for several years. Linksys uses Sipura technology in products that it distributes to about 40 service providers, including Vonage.

Malachy Moynihan, Linksys' vice president of engineering/product marketing, said the acquisition will boost Linksys' internal development activities and give the company access to innovative provisioning technology designed to ease customer installations.

He said the acquisition demonstrates that "Linksys is very serious about voice."

Near term, Linksys will merge the sales efforts of the two companies and go to market with a unified offering, Moynihan said. The acquisition also aims to give Linksys the ability to bring more VoIP development in-house and deliver more quickly on service provider requirements, he added.

About 12 Sipura employees, most of them engineers, will join Cisco. Sipura also contracts a small group in Hong Kong that manages the company's manufacturing supplier.