Cisco Raises Its Bid for Tandberg of Norway - NYTimes.com

Cisco going big on video for the UC as collaboration market. That was evident from John Chambers keynote last week (see my post).

The network equipment maker Cisco on Monday raised its bid for Norwegian videoconferencing equipment maker Tandberg. The increase was backed by holders of more than 40 percent of Tandberg’s shares, few of whom had warmed to Cisco’s previous bid.

I am reminded of Mike Gotta's work a couple years ago on different approaches IBM and Microsoft are taking to the UC market*; IBM being more partner-friendly, focusing on the software side of UC and working well on other's equipment, versus Microsoft's more all-or-nothing approach to building UC solutions including soft-PBXs and equipment (e.g., Roundtable). Cisco's approach takes a network- and video-centric approach to UC, preferring to rely on its strong network roots as the the backbone to delivering high quality communications and collaboration. It's all a matter of perspective.


Cisco Raises Its Bid for Tandberg of Norway - NYTimes.com

*Logically each vendor's approach has evolved over the last couple years, with Microsoft taking on partnerships of convenience and IBM's subtle movements toward its own PBX server (Sametime Unified Telephony) as a less aggressive market play (or market safety net) while telephony vendors begin to struggle to stay alive.