Cisco forks out $1.9 billion for BroadSoft

Cisco has confirmed it will write a cheque for $1.9 billion to acquire software company BroadSoft, as it continues its quest to transform into a software player.

Making the announcement ahead of the BroadSoft customer event in Phoenix, Cisco will pay $55 per share, in cash, in exchange for each share of BroadSoft. The acquisition has already been approved by both Board of Directors, with the deal expected to close in the first quarter of 2018. Once the deal has been completed, BroadSoft employees will join Cisco’s Unified Communications Technology Group.

“Together, Cisco and BroadSoft will deliver a robust suite of collaboration capabilities across every market segment,” said Rowan Trollope, GM of Cisco’s Applications Business Group.

“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.”

Unsurprisingly, Cisco is targeting the collaboration and ‘future of work’ space. In short, people being able to wherever and whenever they want. Such a deal will bring together Cisco’s meetings, hardware and services portfolio and BroadSoft’s open interface and standards-based cloud voice and contact centre solutions into a pretty handy offering.

“Cisco recently marked a significant milestone with our 200th acquisition. 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, hyper convergence and SD-WAN,” said Rob Salvagno, VP of Cisco Corporate Development.

“With the addition of BroadSoft, we expect to accelerate the pace of innovation across our entire collaboration portfolio.”