Cisco to Acquire WebEx
By CXOtoday Staff
Mumbai, Mar 16, 2007

Cisco and WebEx have announced a definitive agreement for Cisco to acquire WebEx.
WebEx is a provider of on-demand collaboration applications.

Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will acquire Webex for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $3.2 billion, or approximately $2.9 billion net of WebEx's existing cash balance.

The acquisition of WebEx is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Cisco's fiscal year 2007.

Charles H. Giancarlo, Chief Development Officer at Cisco, said, "As collaboration in the workplace becomes increasingly important, companies are looking for rich communications tools to help them work more effectively and efficiently. The combination of Cisco and WebEx will deliver compelling solutions accelerating this next wave of business communications."

"Cisco believes the network is a platform for all forms of communications and collaboration, and WebEx's technology and services portfolio complement Cisco's Unified Communications and collaboration market, while providing Cisco with business model to expand its presence in the fast-growing SMB market," Giancarlo continued.

Subrah S. Iyar, CEO of WebEx, said, "Cisco and WebEx share a vision of web collaboration as a key to accelerating business processes. Cisco's global reach and customer focus will help us extend our core web collaboration applications and continue to broaden the services we offer through the WebEx Connect platform."

WebEx's service portfolio includes technologies and services that allow companies to engage in real-time and asynchronous data conferences over the Internet as well as share web-based documents and workspaces that help improve productivity, performance and efficiency of workers in any size organization. Going forward, Cisco plans to preserve this business model of WebEx's subscription-based services strategy.

Following the close of the transaction, WebEx will become a part of Cisco's Development Organization while maintaining its unique business model. Mr. Iyar will report directly to Mr.Giancarlo.