Cisco to buy WebEx for $3.2B in cash

Cisco Systems Inc. said Thursday that it has agreed to acquire the online meeting company WebEx Communications Inc. for about $3.2 billion in cash.

This is a really strong indication that Cisco is going to target medium sized businesses for VOIP, while also using their Netgear franchise to bundle collaborative online business meetings, voice, and data with turn-key appliances. Pretty exciting stuff. Since WebEx acquired Intranets.com some time ago, it also is a new area of SAAS for Cisco. This appears to be new territory for Cisco, as they have not provided SAAS products in the past. It will be interesting to see how the products and services mesh together over time. It almost reminds me of how EBay bought Skype, and yet Skype doesn’t appear to be integrated into other Ebay offerings yet. Both acquisitions appear to be strategies for bolstering the not-so-sexy business of VOIP by adding sexy applications on top of VOIP.