Cisco bolsters telecoms strategy with $139m MaintenanceNet buy

By Business Cloud News

Cisco is looking to buy data analytics and business process automation specialist MaintenanceNet for $139m, the company announced this week. The networking giant said the move will help its partners capture more revenue from contract renewals, and may help strengthen its telecoms strategy, writes Business Cloud News.

MaintenanceNet offers data analytics and software that helps automate and manage the customer contract renewal process. It uses data analytics to aim special offers and new services at existing customers that are up for contract renewal in an automated fashion.

“This helps Cisco partners capture high-volume and low-dollar sales opportunities that may risk being overlooked. This streamlined process enables services contract opportunities to be pursued quickly and efficiently,” explained Debbie Dunnam, senior vice president of worldwide services sales at Cisco.

“MaintenanceNet will be joining Cisco’s Global Customer Success (GCS) organisation, a group dedicated to improving customer engagement and delivering a coordinated, end to end experience to our partners and customers. This acquisition is a critical component of our strategy for GCS to simplify and digitize our business processes.”

The move comes less than two weeks after Cisco paid $635m for OpenDNS, a move intended to strengthen its security services portfolio – with a particular view towards offering IoT-focused network security services.

Cisco said the MaintenanceNet purchase will enable it to further facilitate its partners’ businesses, and a segment one can imagine these kinds of capabilities being particularly relevant is telecoms, where Cisco has been working to make inroads with it Intercloud strategy – and where its business has struggled the most in recent quarters.

Telcos depend heavily on driving revenue growth through both new subscriptions and up-selling existing subscribers, not to mention keeping the subscriber attrition rate low, so anything Cisco can offer to help its partners (and itself, particularly as it goes to market with its own cloud services) achieve these goals will be a strategic imperative.