Cisco just announced the latest multi-billion acquisition in the IT industry: they’ve revealed their plans to buy out NDS Group, a provider of video streaming technology, for a resounding $5 billion.

Cisco had several video-related initiatives up until a few months ago, when it pulled the plug on its Flip unit and more recently, announcing that it will no longer be shipping any new umi videoconferencing units. Nevertheless video remains a big focus for Cisco in the enterprise sector, and this latest development seems to take things to a whole new level.

NDS names British Sky Broadcasting and DirecTV among its high profile clients,  and is majority owned by Permira, the other 49 percent owned by News Corp.  The company currently has about 5,000 employees.

“Our strategy has always been driven by customer need and on capturing market transitions,” says John T. Chambers, Cisco’s chief executive. “Our acquisition of NDS fits squarely into this strategy, enabling content and service providers to deliver new video solutions that leverage the cloud and drive new monetization opportunities and service differentiation.”

Cisco is expanding in the video sector, and closer to its home turf as well.  The company recently launched the third version of its USC all-in-one enterprise box – technology that generates a lot of revenue for the company, but is facing competition from other vendors just like everyone else.

Cisco’s competitors are also branching out to industries bordering with their core networking business – Juniper is one of them. It acquired Mykonos for $80 million, a maker of security software that can block even zero-day exploits by targeting the hacker rather than the malicious code. Mykonos took this a step further by adding advanced tracking functionality to its offering, so enterprises can pin down the source of the attack.