Technology news and Jobs arrow Telecommunications arrow Cisco to buy WebEx for $US3.2b to boost collaboration offerings
Cisco to buy WebEx for $US3.2b to boost collaboration offerings E-mail
by Stuart Corner   
Friday, 16 March 2007
Cisco Systems is to acquire collaboration specialist WebEx for approximately $US3.2 billion in cash to enable it to compete harder in the collaboration market.

Cisco is seeing Microsoft, via the collaboration, messaging and unified communications tools that are part of the Windows ecosystem, encroaching more and more into the IP telephony market in which Cisco is a lead player. It seems highly likely that, without determined efforts to enhance their collaboration offerings Cisco, and other IP telephony systems vendors will find Microsoft subsuming their telephony functions within its collaboration systems offerings.

WebEx is a market leader in on-demand collaboration applications. It is application agnostic enabling users in different locations to view and modify documents on their respective screens by interfacing to each system at the screen, mouse and keyboard level rather than to the application directly.

Its services are sold on a subscription basis. This Cisco says "has been key to its success, and Cisco plans to preserve this business model going forward."

"As collaboration in the workplace becomes increasingly important, companies are looking for rich communications tools to help them work more effectively and efficiently," said Charles Giancarlo, chief development officer at Cisco. "The combination of Cisco and WebEx will deliver compelling solutions accelerating this next wave of business communications.

"WebEx's technology and services portfolio will "complement Cisco's leadership in the unified communications and collaboration market, while providing Cisco with a new and unique business model to expand its presence in the fast-growing SMB market," Giancarlo said.

Following the close of the transaction, WebEx will become a part of Cisco's Development Organisation "while maintaining its unique business model." CEO Subrah Iyar will remain with the business and report directly to Giancarlo.

WebEx was founded in 1995 and held its IPO in July 2000. The company has close to 2200 employees. For FY2006, which ended December 31, 2006, WebEx reported revenues of $US380 million.{moscomment}
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