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.
Addressing the Conflicts in a Huge Acquisition
Of course, combining two brands as large as Cisco and BroadSoft doesn’t come without its challenges. In the Q&A session following the speeches by both Tessler and Trollope, the pair addressed the “Spark” overlap and what it might take to combine collaborative suites between the companies. Rowan said that rationalisation will need to commence within the portfolio. For now, HCS will continue as an enterprise play solution, while everything else below that level remains settled in BroadSoft technology.
One point of concern is the apparent channel conflict between BroadCloud and Cisco HCS. However, Rowan and Michael seemed confident that both brands could work together to serve the market beneath the HCS enterprise space using BroadSoft, while larger deployments in the BroadCloud could potentially move into HCS. Rowan even addressed the idea of partner conflicts regarding IP endpoints and video and stated
“We need to continue to adopt BroadSoft’s winning strategy. We need to allow customers to have choice.”
However, the pair didn’t have an answer for everything. Michael Tessler deftly side-stepped a question about “BroadSoft My Room” and “Meet”, and noted that it was too early to comment on changes to the “Powered by BroadSoft” branding. What’s more, many attendees were left wondering about what the companies will do to address the dramatic differences in their pricing structures.
Designing a Joint Vision for the Future
One of the biggest themes that BroadSoft and Cisco have embraced in the path towards their potential future together, is the idea of allowing customers to have more “choice”. Both Rowan and Michael appeared to be connected on this point, which has long been a key part of BroadSoft’s USP.
Rowan stated that Cisco and BroadSoft would be placing much of their investment into the area of customer experience, to achieve a simpler solution across a range of platforms for customers, and develop synergy in terms of upselling, cross-selling, and so on.
For now, Cisco suggested that they had no plans to continue with additional UCaaS acquisitions, at least not in the immediate future. However, the pre-existing Cisco/Apple relationship could open new doors for BroadSoft to work alongside Apple and create new technology solutions for the network.
