Omnipresence
Networking technology giant Cisco has made a bid to make itself the overwhelmingly dominant player in the video conferencing market today by bidding thee billion dollars to acquire Norwegian company Tandberg.
Traditionally known as the company that makes the equipment the Internet runs on, Cisco has been busy diversifying since the dotcom bubble burst.
It acquired consumer wireless networking outfit Linksys a few years ago, expanded its unified communications offering with the addition of Jabber last year, and decided to get into data centres earlier this year.
Cisco is positioning itself as the complete business communications company, and clearly thinks video conferencing will be a critical component of that offering.
Tandberg technologies like TelePresence - which projects a 3D image of a teleconference attendee to supposedly make the virtual conference feel more ‘real' - will be expected to make the package more enticing for corporate customers.
Tandberg's CEO Fredrik Halvorsen, who will now lead the new TelePresence technology group within Cisco, said: "The combination of world-class technologies, Cisco's global scale, and exceptional people from both organizations will enable us to accelerate innovation and market adoption."
Here's a toe-curlingly choreographed video of Halvorsen and Cisco CEO John Chambers talking about the deal using TelePresence technology.
