EC approves Cisco's Tandberg acquisition, but demands interoperability UPDATED

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 30 March 2010 14:41

IT Industry - Market

Cisco has secured EC clearance for its planned Tandberg acquisition, so long as it takes steps to ensure other vendors can interoperate with its videoconferencing products.

Cisco says the acquisition has cleared the final two hurdles - approval from the European Commission and a statement from the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice that it will not challenge the proposed acquisition - and as a result the deal will close "in coming weeks".

However the EC has extracted from Cisco a commitment to enhancing interoperability between its multiscreen videoconferencing products and competitive products.

These commitments include the appointment by Cisco of an independent monitor, approved by the Commission, to oversee implementation of the commitments and Cisco divesting ownership of its TelePresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP).

Cisco says it will undertake to meet the commitments "within a short time". However this has not been specified.

Marthin De Beer, senior vice president of Cisco's Emerging Technologies Business Group, said: "Cisco has always strongly believed that industry expansion and growth is best fostered through open standards and interoperability, and our commitments to the Commission formalise our approach in this area."

Cisco announced TIP in late January saying then that it would be available on a royalty free licence and that LifeSize, Tandberg and Radvision had already taken licences. It claimed that release of TIP "marks a significant step in creating a new open standard for telepresence, similar to other industry video standards."

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