Cisco today announced the acquisition of Tandberg, a Norwegian video communications company. Tandberg offer a range of hardware and software solutions from personal video conferencing through to high end Telepresence solutions, as well as network and content infrastructure tools and professional services.
According to their press release “This proposed acquisition would combine TANDBERG’s best-in-class telepresence and video conferencing portfolio with Cisco’s world-class collaboration architecture and network capabilities.”
This is a significant acquisition for Cisco, that clearly indicates a belief that there is a growing market for virtual communication technologies.
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Any chance they’ve just bought Tandberg in order to remove a competitor?
That’s certainly a possibility, but even for a corporation of Cisco’s size paying $3 billion (an 11% premium on the current share price) would be a lot of money to remove a competitor.
Whether the acquisition is about direct growth or the removal of competition, that’s a serious sum of money to be spending, which does indicate how important they view the virtual communication sector. From an initial review, my impression is that Cisco will benefit greatly from Tandberg’s range of hardware products, particularly the lower end virtual meeting tools.