Cisco has continued its acquisition trail, snapping up BroadSoft for US$1.7 billion in a deal designed to enhance Cisco's collaboration offerings – and continue its move away from networking hardware.
BroadSoft is a software company providing cloud PBX, unified communications, team collaboration and contact centre solutions.
Cisco says BroadSoft's hosted offerings, sold through service providers and aimed at small and medium businesses, are highly complementary to Cisco's on-premises and enterprise-centric HCS offerings.
Rowan Trollope, Cisco senior vice president and general manager of the Applications Business Group, says the combined company will deliver 'a robust suite of collaboration capabilities across every market'.
"We believe that our combined offers, from Cisco's collaboration technology for enterprises to BroadSoft's suite for small and medium businesses delivered through service providers will give customers more choice and flexibility," Trollope says.
Rob Salvagno, Cisco corporate business development vice president, says Broadsoft was chosen for its portfolio of cloud collaboration platforms and business applications, which he syas strengthen Cisco's cloud investments and ability to deliver collaboration solutions to global telecom provider customers.
"Following the close of the acquisition, Cisco and BroadSoft will provide a comprehensive SaaS portfolio of cloud based unified communications, collaboration and contact centre software solutions and services for customers of all sizes," Salvagno says.
Earlier this year Cisco acquired AppDynamics in what was its 200th acquisition.
In October, Salvagno noted that the company 'has used acquisitions in concert with our internal research and development engine and they continue to be part of our build, buy, partner, invest and co-develop approach to innovation'.
"Acquisitions continue to be a core part of our innovation strategy and over the past two years have helped Cisco accelerate or enter areas such as IoT, application intelligence, AI, hyperconvergence and SD-WAN," Salvagno says.
"With the addition of BroadSoft, we expect to accelerate the pace of innovatin across our entire collaboration portfolio.
The deal is expected to close during the first quarter of calendar 2018, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory review.
Once the deal closes, BroadSoft employees will join Cisco's Unified Communications Technology Group.
