Cisco ups its cloud offering by acquiring BroadSoft

Cisco has completed its billion dollar acquisition of BroadSoft in a bid to accelerate its cloud computing offerings. It is the latest acquisition by Cisco as it aims to become a key player in the Cloud sphere. BroadSoft has established itself as a leading cloud calling and contact centre solutions provider offering calling, meetings, messaging, customer care and hardware endpoints.

Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco is paying $55 per share, in cash, in exchange for each share of BroadSoft common stock, for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $1.9 billion net of cash and investment, assuming fully diluted shares including conversion of debt. Cisco expects that the delisting of BroadSoft’s common stock from the NASDAQ stock market will formally become effective on February 12.

Talking about the importance of upping its cloud computing output, a spokesperson for Cisco said that it is looking at expanding its ‘hybrid solutions’. “More and more businesses expect fully featured calling, meeting, messaging and contact center solutions with the ability to deploy them flexibly – on premises, in the cloud or as hybrid solutions to leverage existing investments,” the spokesperson said. “By combining BroadSoft’s open interface and standards-based solutions primarily delivered via Service Provider partners, with Cisco’s existing portfolio, the combined company will offer best-of-breed solutions for businesses of all sizes which will be delivered through VAR and Service Provider partners. Together, Cisco and BroadSoft will deliver a full suite of rich collaboration experiences to power the future of work.”