Long the symbol of next-generation business communications, BroadSoft closes an era as it agrees to Cisco purchase. On Oct. 23, Cisco announced its impending acquisition of BroadSoft, an event marking the UCaaS industry's crossing of the Rubicon. With its inception in 1998, BroadSoft heralded the rise of cloud/hosted services and, for almost two decades, symbolized the next generation of business communications, standing tall against the "establishment" embodied by Avaya, Cisco, and the other PBX vendors. As new cloud providers emerged, occasionally referring to BroadSoft as a provider of "legacy" hosted technology, BroadSoft stuck to its guns as an independent telco carrier enabler, avoiding direct competition with its channel. With this acquisition, BroadSoft surrendered its independent status to the powerhouse of the old guard Cisco and ended an era that forever changed the enterprise communications space. At the same time, BroadSoft's acquisition by none other than the leading premises-based UC vendor provides strong validation of the industry's move to cloud. An examination of how this acquisition, if successfully completed, will affect the different stakeholders is important. I'll leave the analysis of the acquisition's impact on BroadSoft shareholders to the financial analysts, and will focus instead on its impact on Cisco, endpoint and technology partners, UCaaS providers, UCaaS platform vendors, and end customers. Read full post » Here are other top trending posts regarding Cisco’s BroadSoft Acquisition on No Jitter: BroadSoft Fits Cisco Like Puzzle Piece Go Big or Go Home: Cisco to Pay $2B for BroadSoft Cisco Buys BroadSoft, Now What? Cisco-BroadSoft Deal: Big News, Poor Timing |