Networking giant Cisco has acquired
WebEx, maker of hosted
on-demand collaboration applications, in a move that builds on the
network giant's full-court press to lead the unified communications
market and target the younger workforce.
According to Cisco, the roughly $3.2 billion deal is expected to
broaden its unified communications vision, mostly within the SMB
space.
In a statement, Cisco chief development officer Charles H.
Giancarlo said, "As collaboration in the workplace becomes
increasingly important, companies are looking for rich
communications tools to help them work more effectively and
efficiently. The combination of Cisco and WebEx will deliver
compelling solutions accelerating this next wave of business
communications."
Cisco has recently trumpeted its "network as a platform" vision,
and according to experts, this acquisition falls right in line with
that stance.
"Cisco believes the network is a platform for all forms of
communications and collaboration…" Giancarlo said.
Subrah S. Iyar, CEO of WebEx, added: "Cisco and WebEx share a
vision of Web collaboration as a key to accelerating business
processes and critical to durable competitive advantage. Cisco's
global reach and customer focus will help us extend our core Web
collaboration applications and continue to broaden the services we
offer through the WebEx connect platform."
WebEx's solutions include subscription-based technologies and
services for companies to engage in real-time and asynchronous data
conferences over the Internet, as well as share Web-based documents
and workspaces.
Zeus Kerravala,
Yankee Group senior vice
president, said the WebEx acquisition -- coupled with Cisco's
recent acquisitions of social networking and collaboration vendors
Five Across and Utah Street Networks -- gives Cisco an advantage by
allowing it to entice a younger enterprise workforce, which will
eventually demand this level of functionality.
Kerravala said the WebEx buy is also a slap back at Microsoft
for making further inroads in the enterprise. The WebEx deal could
be seen as a rival to Microsoft's popular LiveMeeting collaboration
tool.
"Everyone talks about unified collaboration, but until now we've
only had unified collaboration tools for workers over 40,"
Kerravala said, adding that the WebEx, Five Across and Utah Street
acquisitions further promote the idea of any user collaborating
from anywhere. Kerravala called that the "anywhere worker."
"Cisco can build this into the network and make it a service,"
he said.
As the unified communications market continues to evolve and
mature, Kerravala said, companies can expect to see major vendors
offering hosted services that are targeted to companies that may
not have the resources to run in-house collaboration systems. Cisco
already offers a host of collaboration tools, but Kerravala noted
they have yet to capture a hosted service like WebEx, which
eliminates the need for some companies to shell out massive amounts
of money for software and hardware required for in-house
systems.
"If you're going to be a unified communications vendor, you not
only have to offer a wide variety of tools but different ways to
deliver those tools," Kerravala said. "Cisco never had a hosted
delivery mechanism. Everything they sold was to companies who
wanted to buy it and do it themselves. There was a big chunk of the
market that Cisco had kind of left alone."