Cisco's Acquisition of TANDBERG: Customer, Channel, and Market Impact

Cisco's acquisition of TANDBERG represents an inflection point in the video conferencing and telepresence market. It is a step toward blurring the lines between the various forms of video conferencing endpoints with the goal of creating a single, standards-based ecosystem for any-to-any video calling. Cisco moved quickly and has already integrated the full line of TANDBERG video endpoints and most TANDBERG infrastructure components with its Cisco TelePresence systems — the product line that coined the term for the high end of the video conferencing market.

Cisco has also integrated both its own and TANDBERG's video conferencing and telepresence systems with its WebEx assets. IDC believes that with this acquisition, the two companies bring complementary strengths to the table.