Cisco to buy BroadSoft in $1.9bn deal

Cisco to push into unified communications cloud services with agreed Broadsoft buy

Cisco has agreed a $1.9bn deal for telecoms software company BroadSoft, a move that confirms reports over the weekend of Cisco's interest in acquiring the company.

The primary aim of the acquisition is to boost Cisco's portfolio of collaboration tools, and further diversify away from the company's core switch and router hardware offerings.

The company claimed that customer adoption of cloud computing meant that they are increasingly demanding 'deployment flexibility' and require 'collaboration solutions across all workloads on premise, and in the cloud'.

'The acquisition of BroadSoft accelerates the growth of Cisco's cloud collaboration portfolio by adding the industry's best cloud voice and contact center solutions to Cisco's leading meetings, hardware and services portfolio,' the company told investors in a presentation intended to explain the deal and its rationale.

In particular, BroadSoft claims 25 of the top-30 global telecoms carriers, including all the big-name US telecoms companies, as well as Vodafone, Australia's Telstra and Spain's Telefonica.

BroadSoft's technology includes an integrated portfolio of cloud Private Branch Exchange (PBX), unified communications, collaboration and contact centre software and services.

It also offers software enabling customers to offer unified communications-as-a-service (UcaaS), either from their own platform or from Broadsoft's own BroadCloud software-as-a-service or platform-as-a-service delivery platforms.

Cisco concluded: 'Following the acquisition, we will deliver integrated experiences across meetings, calling, and contact centre, with deployment options for on-premises or cloud, enabling more choice and more robust solutions.

'Our combined offers will address demand for every segment - Cisco's existing solutions in on-premises and in the cloud for enterprise customers, and BroadSoft's suite for the small and medium-sized business segment.'

On completion of the transaction, BroadSoft staff will join Cisco's Unified Communications Technology Group, led by general manager Tom Puorro, under the Applications Group led by Trollope, Rowan Trollope, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco's Applications Business Group.

The purchase brings to 201 the number of companies Cisco has acquired since it was founded in the mid-1980s.