The announcement of Cisco’s BroadSoft acquisition in October last year was met with some scepticism within the industry. Suspicions over confirmation, relating mainly to possible competition violations, made some unsure it would ever be finalised. But that confirmation came at the start of February when BroadSoft stopped trading on the Nasdaq.
With the final confirmation coming only recently there are now many questions on the future of the BroadSoft propositions within the industry. We don’t expect any firm confirmation of Cisco’s exact plans until later on in the year, leaving much room for speculation on the various possible outcomes.
After confirmation what will happen with BroadSoft staff?
The most pressing question from a humanitarian perspective is what will happen to the existing BroadSoft staff. There are over 1700 of them. Well immediately nothing, apart from internal reshuffles at the senior management end of the spectrum. We can expect Cisco to keep things running as they are for at least the next few months. However in the long term it’s harder to predict. The immediate concern would be for any roles with a direct overlap with existing Cisco departments: Legal, Finance, HR etc. As with most acquisitions there will be no need to duplicate these, although there may be a requirement for expansion of their existing departments to cover the new staff numbers. From a technical staff perspective, again it’s very difficult to predict what direction Cisco will take. Technical staff working on specific BroadSoft platforms will have to wait and see to find out if Cisco continue with the existing portfolio as it is, which is unlikely.
Will Cisco re-brand?
They already have to a small extent to Cisco BroadSoft. However the future of the BroadSoft brand is a topic of much debate, even within our own UC Today virtual office. The consensus within the industry, and the office, seems to be that in the fullness of time the BroadSoft name and branding will completely disappear, agglomerated into the Cisco machine. I am not so sure though. I have a feeling with such a well-established name and brand, Cisco might see the value of keeping it as Cisco BroadSoft. As they have done and appear to be maintaining with Cisco Meraki.
What will happen to the BroadSoft portfolio?
Perhaps the greatest uncertainty is how will Cisco address the product and services portfolio. There have been no announcements so far. The answer is nobody knows, probably not even Cisco at this point. However there are some assumptions that seem pretty logical. For example it would seem Team-One, BroadSoft’s messaging and collaboration application, is doomed. Cisco Spark covers that area so it would make sense for Team-One to be incorporated into Spark maybe with some of the unique features of Team-One being added in. The same is expected with UC-One Meet, the BroadSoft meeting application, with WebEx likely to absorb that. In regards to the other BroadSoft platforms it’s very hard to predict. Cisco have a number of overlapping products but they could also incorporate some of BroadSoft’s solutions as standard in their devices, although that seems an unlikely option.
What do partners think?
Cavell Group have completed some research in this area. Canvassing a good number of BroadSoft service providers in the US and in Europe. As you might expect the first concern within the partner community is the pricing, with the speculation that the pricing schemes might rise throughout the adjustment process. Another concern is the level of service and support that partners receive. Will the same levels of support remain under Cisco, and will partners now have added levels of bureaucracy in place before being able to access service if direct links with BroadSoft disappear? However one positive generally coming from the partner network is the perceived power of the Cisco brand and how that may enable them to break into new markets. You can expect much more insight from Cavell Group coming out of their Cloud Comms Summit which takes place in London next week.
So until we get any firm news from Cisco BroadSoft all of the above and much more is up for debate. We can only wait and see to find out Cisco’s full plan and how that will affect the current setup. Will it work? It certainly makes Cisco BroadSoft the dominating power in terms of market share and with BroadSoft being so well established, on the proviso that the adjustment process is handled well, you can expect it to be a success.
