CNet: Cisco to buy WebEx for $3.2 billion. Cisco has been buying up into the services layer for a long time, and a service like WebEx, which depends on rock solid communications management, is a natural fit.
It would be interesting to know what this represents as a multiple of earnings. So many companies (my own included) depend on WebEx as a critical sales enabler that you could read that multiple as a prediction on the future growth of the technology sector.
Anyway, I hope that the acquisition means that WebEx sticks to its knitting. I haven’t been impressed with their scattered marketing focus recently (we’re a conference solution! a training aid! a tech support tool!) while their core conference delivery business still has wrinkles to work out.