The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

Cisco buys into video conferencing

Cisco is paying $3bn for Norwegian video conferencing specialist Tandberg. The cash offer of 153.5 Norwegian Kroner for each Tandberg share represents a 25 per cent premium on the three month average share price. It has been unanimously accepted by Tandberg's board and is expected to close in the first half of next year. Cisco …

This topic is closed for new posts.
jeremy 3

poor facts

1) Cisco was ALREADY in video conferencing.

2) Tandberg do much much more than video conferencing, they do alot of hardware video transcoding in the broadcast industry.

Gaz 6
Terminator

more than just video conf

I agree, Tandberg has a whole host of things they do in the broadcast world and maybe a tiny portion is IP video conferencing..this is a big deal. Cisco has now become the Borg..

Anonymous Coward
FAIL

@poor facts

Erm, talking of poor facts, Tandberg as you refer to it is not a single company. There are a bunch of companies bearing that name with absolutely no business links. In particular the broadcast bit (Tandberg Television) has been in the hands of Ericsson for a couple of years.

Anonymous Coward
Stop

@Jez and Gaz

Think you're confusing Tandberg (a video-conferencing company) with Tandberg Television (a broadcast equipment company). Related, but separate companies.

Mad Hacker

SeeAndShare

All I know is we use Tandberg SeeAndShare a lot for screen sharing. We own a site license and have a dedicated server behind our firewall but allow public access for use with our partners. I really wish there were Mac OS X and Linux versions available of that product.

sramana

Hp Buys Polycom Next

I think HP buys Polycom next: http://www.sramanamitra.com/2009/10/01/cisco-buys-tandberg-hp-to-buy-polycom/

Basically, in the video conferencing market (all the way from desktop video to telepresence and other immersive solutions, and everything in between like plasma screens, etc.), the 2 leaders are Polycom (~40%) and Tandberg (~40%). Cisco, HP, Avaya, Nortel are all bit players in comparison.

Both Polycom and Tandberg have good interoperability with other standards based systems, which Cisco, for example, doesn’t. Cisco-Cisco works fine. Cisco-others doesn’t. That’s why they lost the ~$45m Regus account.

VCVC
Boffin

Interoperability

Which begs the question:

Will Cisco stifle the interoperability of Tandberg's products to pursue its traditional strategy of vendor lock in or will Cisco turn all warm and fuzzy and embrace open standards?

This topic is closed for new posts.