Cisco Acquired BroadSoft. Here’s What It Means for Your Cloud Telephony System

If you haven’t seen the news about Cisco acquiring BroadSoft, take note. The acquisition signals a strategic move on Cisco’s part to transition toward cloud telephony system offerings. Here’s how this may impact you as you evolve your organization’s communications strategy, and what this means for the market overall.

First, some background: we all know Cisco. Even people outside of the technology world or the average person on the street know Cisco as a leader in networking hardware. On the other hand, BroadSoft boasts far less brand recognition but they are no less of an industry leader in their own market. For those unfamiliar with BroadSoft, they’re a white label soft switch provider, allowing companies to leverage their platform to offer their own unified communication services.

Before BroadSoft, telephone companies offered expensive PBX switches to help companies manage their multiple phone lines. BroadSoft’s solution has been “Behind the scenes,”, repackaged and sold by major communications companies to their customers as a cloud telephony system solution.

BroadSoft: an unusual acquisition for Cisco

The $1.9 billion deal is a move that’s gotten many in the tech industry buzzing. It further demonstrates Cisco’s push into the software and cloud market, a pivot many companies have been slow to make, often at their peril. Many on-premise solutions are struggling to make this transformation. Avaya is just one example of a company that has failed in this transition—in fact, the seventeen year-old company recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Avaya built their business on hardware and licensing, and has been fatally late moving to the software and “as-a-Service” model.  

The fact that Cisco is making heavy investments in companies such as BroadSoft not only signals that their strategy is maintaining their success, but offers further evidence on where the market is headed overall.

What this means for telephony

In other words: Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) is about to take off—and the Cisco-BroadSoft acquisition shows us where the future of telephony lies. iT1 sees evidence of this trend accelerating with no end in sight.. Just like with so many other IT services, we’re seeing many clients opting into the cloud for its accessibility, speed, simplicity. And now, when they work with Cisco specifically, they get to choose whether to go cloud, attempt to remain on-premise or take on a hybrid solution.

iT1 can help you modernize your telephony

Your phone is just one piece of your communications strategy. Unified communications the present and future of workplace communication and collaboration tools, giving workers a full suite of tools (voice, messaging, video, conferencing solutions, etc.) to connect and be more productive.

Cloud-based solutions give our customers greater flexibility. iT1 can help you find the best solution for you, giving you the most in terms of support while removing much of the burden that comes with hardware, such as the expense and maintenance requirements. Contact iT1 today to learn more.