Featured Article from Unified Communications Headsets

Cisco's Acano Purchase Means Tighter Microsoft Connection to Come

By Steve Anderson
Contributing Writer

Recently, Cisco (News - Alert) made a big move in the market when it purchased Acano, a London-based startup firm that focused on collaboration tools, particularly those in the Skype (News - Alert) for Business, Office 365, and Lync 2013 lines. Cisco's $700 million purchase of Acano was part of an overall acquisition thrust, but new reports suggest that this purchase might bring Cisco and Microsoft (News - Alert) closer together.

Acano, according to IVCi's Chris Bottger—a partner with both Acano and Cisco—has some unusual technologies as part of its roster that should give Cisco a significant edge in developing communications tools for use with the Microsoft platforms. Acano has a close connection to Microsoft tools, and this new connection will now be Cisco's to put to use. Bottger points out that three years prior, Cisco was eager to beat Microsoft, but now seems more interested in joining instead. Bottger notes that Cisco seems out to help Microsoft make a better overall communications environment, and in turn, is able to get a note of control over a rapidly-growing market.

By way of support, back in 2014, Cisco and Microsoft got together on a three-year agreement to make the companies' data center portfolios better connected, and the purchase of Acano might easily be seen as further support of that arrangement. Since Acano offers both hardware and software to help connect video systems, regardless of the vendors involved, Cisco having a hand in Acano's operations should not only help better connect Cisco and Microsoft, but also connect Cisco and other companies' lineups as well.

Acano offers up a wide variety of tools on that front, from gateways to audio and video bridging tools, making it a versatile force in interconnection. The role of hardware in conferencing tools is hard to overstate, and companies like Jabra (News - Alert) are likewise joining in. After all, conferencing without the proper unified communications headsets can be every bit as disastrous as having a bad connection in the middle or having software that's difficult to use.

Every part of a conference combines together to produce an overall experience. Whether it's hardware or software or audio endpoint, it all has a hand in making the best experience possible, and Cisco's move to buy Acano and better connect with Microsoft seems to be done with the experience in mind. That improves the likelihood that more users will turn to Skype for Business or Lync 2013, and given the growth of tools like Web-based real time communications (WebRTC), giving Skype an edge in the market shouldn't be taken lightly.

The new connection between Cisco and Acano should ultimately deliver some exciting results, and make an already useful system even better in the long run. It will need those extra advantages to preserve its position in an increasingly crowded market.