Discussion on:

Cisco makes big bet on Web conferencing

Cisco Systems shelled out $3.2 billion for the No. 1 Web-conferencing service provider, WebEx, as part of its strategy to find new markets for growth. Not only will Cisco gain market share and subscription service expertise, but WebEx will keep Cisco on par with its largest rival and most important partner in unified communications, Microsoft.



When it comes to Web conferencing, would you tell Cisco ?good buy? or ?good-bye??



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#1 web conferencing provider bought by the #1 networking company? This looks like a great deal to me, as long as Cisco doesn't ruin WebEx. That is unlikely to happen; Cisco's management team is too sharp for that. The Linksys deal seems to be working for them, so they have a good precedent for this kind of move.

This is not financial advice. I am not a financial planner or lawyer.

I work for a very large organization (>5,000) in IT alone and 90% of my meetings these days are over the phone. Currently we're using Sametime but it's pretty buggy. The future definitely belongs to web conferencing & meetings given the increasing cost of travel not to mention the impact on the environment.

I have been trying to re-establish my account at Cisco every since they fouled it up in May of 2003, with no luck. I occasionally give up in disgust; only to retry on request by customers.

They have a tremendous disconnect with small businesses, and as far as I am concerned are as f****d up and a football bat!

Seems over-priced to me. I read something about what the per customer acquisition costs would be and they seemed very high. But if it puts them head-to-head with M$, then I guess they saw a return down the road...