BroadSoft Connections has long established itself as one of the ultimate communications and teleconferencing events on the annual calendar. However, this year, the excitement was palpable, following an incredible and market-changing announcement that confirmed Cisco is now on track to purchase BroadSoft for $1.9 billion.
I was on hand to attend Connections this year, and hear directly from the Senior Vice President of Cisco, Rowan Trollope, and the CEO of BroadSoft, Michael Tessler, about the impending purchase, and what it means to channel partners and end customers.
Creating Enhanced Collaboration and Communication
Rowan was the first to take the stage and speak about the journey that Cisco has taken up until this point, to create a more streamlined and comprehensive solution for a UC&C stack. Rowan suggested that Cisco has long been focused on improving their collaboration strategy, in a "flexible way", and noted that the new BroadSoft acquisition could give the brand access to solutions they didn't have previously for global deployment and scale.
As the modern IT environment grows more complex and distributed, companies like Cisco and BroadSoft have both been looking at solutions that make speed and scalability more accessible. In 2012, Cisco purchased Meraki for $1.2 billion, not just to harness their wireless solutions, but also to make the most of their infrastructure management technologies. Now, that acquisition will become even more important as they embrace BroadSoft's 18-million-wide user-installed base.
By bringing BroadSoft into the heart of their strategy, Cisco can deliver richer, more scalable solutions to a larger audience around the world, potentially making them the biggest competitor in the UC marketplace.
An Evolution of the BroadSoft Strategy
After a positive message about the future of Cisco and it's UC evolution, Rowan passed the floor to Michael Tessler, who noted that up until now, BroadSoft had focused largely on SMBs. However, with Cisco, BroadSoft will be able to push some of their technology "upmarket" - particularly their three strategic foundations: "BroadSoft Business", "BroadCloud" and "Powered by BroadSoft".
Tessler noted that BroadSoft has always focused on the productivity of the end-user in their application suite, making it easier for businesses to transition to the cloud seamlessly. They will be continuing their open solution for integration "bOpen", as Michael noted that one of the most important elements of BroadSoft's success has been their "open ecosystem". Indeed, walking through the BroadSoft Connections show flow, it's easy to see a huge variety of diverse partners and solutions available through BroadSoft integrations.
