Announced today was Cisco’s acquisition of WebEx — an industry-leading company that dominates in on-demand group collaboration applications. Before looking at anything else, we need to look closely at one element: the mission of Cisco.
“Shape the future of the Internet by creating unprecedented value and opportunity for our customers, employees, investors, and ecosystem partners.”
How exactly does this acquisition fit in with the mission of Cisco? With the ability of Cisco and WebEx to work together now, Cisco — the parent company — will be able to innovate new products that integrate the online collaboration knowledge from WebEx into the networking products of Cisco. This is a key element for Cisco because it now allows them to produce new ideas that combine the collaboration and networking together instead of working independently of each other.
This is definitely a win-win situation for the world. Cisco — already owning LinkSys — can now move forward to take the online collaboration industry head on and dominate the market which still prematurely exists. Online collaboration is definitely out there, but there is not a strong force for it yet.
Cisco’s management team has done a great thing for the Internet. We can all thank Cisco for this as it will revolutionize the way businesses communicate.
Update 03/16/07: Cisco purchased WebEx for a mere USD$3.2 billion.
