This was a surprise this morning: the announcement that Cisco is buying Broadsoft (BSFT) for almost $2 Billion. BSFT hired bankers a couple of months ago when they received an offer. I guess it was from Cisco.
Despite Call Manager, HCS and Spark, Broadsoft was kicking its ass in UCaaS. Spark nor HCS were ever going to replace a softswitch, so go buy it. It was either buy BSFT or buy Metaswitch. Metaswitch is private; BSFT went public in 2010.
It fits Cisco. They like recurring maintenance revenue. They can pile on other gear to the BSFT clients. Maybe Webex and Spark start making their way into BroadWorks.
BroadCloud will be new for Cisco. Running an ITSP isn’t the same as selling gear. Heck, Cisco and its partners have been having a helluva time transitioning to selling software. This may be the only piece they choke on.
Metaswitch has twice as many customers as BSFT. I have to wonder what they runway looks like. As legacy telecom sunsets, they offer ssome VoLTE and Hosted PBX functionality, but that can’t be revenue sustainable. That very prospect is why BSFT is selling.
As one of the CMOs said, “It’s boring selling SIP trunks.”
This transaction comes on the weekend that launches the annual customer expo for BSFT in Arizona. That should create some buzz on Monday morning in the desert.