Cisco acquires WebEx for $3.2B

Flush with cash and confidence, Cisco today took the wraps of a deal to buy online conferencing company WebEx for $3.2 billion in a bid to secure the hearts and minds of the SMB market. During a press conference this morning, Cisco executives said the WebEx service is a key product for small and medium-size businesses. While Cisco already offers collaboration tools for the high-end of the market, WebEx's hosted service provides collaboration tools to smaller organizations that do not want to buy expensive software and hardware required to host on their own network.

The Webex news comes on the heels of an announcement yesterday to purchase NeoPath, Cisco's sixth storage company acquisition. Cisco plans to incorporate NeoPath's technology into its Services Oriented Network Architecture. It is seen by observers as another Cisco step to develop the growing "file-virtualization market." Other vendors, including Brocade and EMC have acquired file-virtualization vendors and integrated the capabilities into already existing product sets.

For more:
- check out this report
- and this article from NetworkWorld