Coming so soon after the company bought a social networking platform (Tribe.net), Cisco’s $3.2-billion acquisition of WebEx makes it clear that the network equipment company’s interest in matters of the Web is more than just a passing fancy (although I suppose that it’s possible deals of that size qualify as a fancy at a giant like Cisco, which has a market cap of about $155-billion).<\/p>\n
In any case, WebEx is an interesting purchase to make. I think Om is right that the service makes a natural pawn <\/a>(or maybe a rook) in the chess game with Microsoft for supremacy in the in-between world of Web and desktop for corporate users. And from that point of view the deal makes a certain amount of sense as a positioning effort.<\/p>\n However, I also think Rafe Needleman makes an excellent point in his post at Webware<\/a>, which has the wonderful title: “Cisco buys WebEx for the land — the product is a teardown.” Having used the service more than once, I can attest to the fact that in most cases it is difficult to configure and a pain in the ass to use, in contrast to more flexible (and cheaper) Web services such as Vyew.com and Adobe’s Connect.<\/p>\n In that sense, the deal doesn’t look quite so great — and the valuation looks rich at best. Paul Kedrosky asks whether Cisco even knows what it wants to be<\/a> when it grows up.<\/p>\n