Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) may face stiff competition in the software-defined networking battle with Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:BRCD)’s latest takeover of open source networking software company Vyatta. The deal amount was not disclosed but is expected to close by the end of the calendar year. The rise of software defined networks appears to be a genuine trouble the Vyatta solution can solve.

Vyatta software uses standard x86 hardware and the company regularly states noteworthy capital and operational cost savings over Cisco routers. Brocade CEO Mike Klayko said that Vyatta will allow them to track new market opportunities in data centre virtualization, public cloud, enterprise virtual private cloud, managed services, and strengthen its overall software networking capability.

Shares of Cisco (CSCO) traded up 0.29% during trading yesterday, hitting $17.40 on NASDAQ, whose benchmark S&P 500 added 3.06 points to 1,417.26 points. The latest closing price is 17.02% off the 52-week high of $21.30 and +17.15% above the 52-week low of $14.96. At that price, shares moved down -6.66% from the 50-day simple moving average and down -4.97% than 200-day average.

How a stock moves along with the market depends on its volatility and for this stock, the volatility of 2.21% was seen in a week and for the month was 2.01%. The majority of analysts covering CSCO stock believe it will struggle to hit 21.79.

A total of 22.19 million shares changed hands with price floating in a range of $17.20 – $17.44.  However, its 30-day average volume stands at 35.63 million shares. The year-to-date (YTD) performance reflected a -1.92% gall below last year. During the past month the stock dropped -8.08%, bringing three-month performance to +7.21% and six-month performance to -7.89%.