Cisco buying Tandberg tipped to shake up UC market

Stuart Corner
Monday, 05 October 2009 01:45

IT Industry - Strategy

From the US Allan Sulkin, TEQConsult Group writing on the No Jitter blog commented: "Tandberg and Polycom had relatively limited marketing resources in comparison to Cisco's. Cisco showed what it could do to drive a market when it entered IP telephony through its Selsius Systems acquisition almost 11 years ago. IP telephony systems were certainly going to replace traditional digital PBXs, but Cisco certainly accelerated the timetable and forced the traditional voice system suppliers to respond more quickly to the new competitive threat.

Avaya tipped to acquire Polycom
"Tandberg products fit in very nicely with Cisco's UC portfolio. Competitors such as Avaya will likely partner more closely with Polycom or even consider an acquisition, because the playing field has now changed. Polycom was able to compete effectively against Tandberg, but will find it far more difficult going against Cisco."

Also on No Jitter, Irwin Lazar, Nemertes Research commented: "It's likely we'll see Polycom move closer to both Microsoft and Avaya to deliver a complete competitive UC offering voice, video, and presence-enabled applications to compete with those from Cisco...Smaller vendors such as Avistar, LifeSize, and Vidyo are increasingly likely targets for acquisition. HP, currently a Tandberg partner, faces the loss of a key channel."

Melanie Turek, Frost & Sullivan said rumours of Avaya buying Polycom had been circulating prior to Cisco's move on Tandberg and, even if nothing comes of these rumours the Cisco-Tandberg deal could be good for Polycom. "Polycom is now the leading independent videoconferencing vendor...[and] now the videoconferencing vendor of choice for all other unified communications players. It has to be: why would anyone want to sell its main competitor's products if it can avoid doing so?"