Cisco Systems announced its intent to acquire Acano Limited, a London based company that provides collaboration infrastructure and conferencing software for 700 million dollars in cash and stock. It must be noted that Acano’s hardware and software includes gateways, video and audio bridging technology that allows customers to connect video systems from multiple vendors across both cloud and hybrid environments.
With this acquisition, Cisco’s collaboration strategy to deliver video everywhere, providing the best collaboration experience across every endpoint, every screen, every workspace, and to every user, will become a reality. Today, something less than 10% of the conference rooms worldwide are connected via video. However, there is a massive market shift underway in collaboration, since customers want the ability to easily connect from anywhere, from dedicated hardware endpoints to sharing video on a mobile phone. As for the Acano team, it will join the Cisco Collaboration Technology Group led by Rowan Trollope, Senior Vice President and General Manager.
