A pedestrian walks past the Cisco logo at the technology company's campus in San Jose, California. Credit: Reuters/Robert Galbraith
Parallels said in a statement that Cisco has bought about 1 percent of the company and added that the stake sale does not rule out a possible
initial public offering of the Russian firm.
"We are looking at all possible ways to ensure liquidity options: dividend payouts, IPO, mergers and acquisitions," Parallel's press service said.
The price of the deal with Cisco has not been revealed, but Cisco will get a seat on Parallels board of directors, the press service said.
At the end of last year the company, which does not disclose financial results, announced that it aims to expand its cloud business and solutions based on the Unified Data Center platform by 20-26 percent annually in the next three years.