The reason may not apparent to many but it has to do with Microsoft and Skype for Business having the attention of MSP’s, carriers, mobile operators, as they are the channel partners for Microsoft and Cisco had nothing really in the cloud to attach Spark to in telecom.
This left them as a feature, not a business, so since BSOFT is such a player already with carriers, cable ops and mobile operators this helps Cisco get their cloud on better.
Congrats to Broadsoft for selling out!
But when you think about it, given all the efforts, the customers and the technology, only $1.9 billion (net cash)? Let's think about this. Skype was bought for $8.5 billion by Microsoft. WhatsApp was purchased by Facebook for $19 billion or 8 1/2 times as much.
The reason? Born in the cloud baby..Born in the cloud. Broadsoft wasn't. They were a legacy telco's IP comms solution, that is now trying to get to the cloud. something Cisco knows a lot about, and which is the direction Broadsoft was moving but just not fast enough obviously. Now maybe they'll get there, but being born in the 2.0 cloud vs. trying to get to the 2.0 pure cloud model isn't a walk in the park, plus many of the Broadsoft carrier customer don't really care.
This is about buying market share, revenue and a team. Nothing more. How long it takes for Cisco to integrate, and how they use it to fight off Microsoft (they are not friends) is really the game here to be played out...oh, MSFT and Mitel...while that battle looms, the pure cloud players who don't have legacy approaches to have to work out of will continue to grow and prosper.
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