Cisco to acquire WebEx for $3.2 Billion

WebEx, the hosted services company known for their business collaboration suites, will soon be a part of the Cisco family. For a total value of around $3.2 Billion, Cisco will be acquiring the company to incorporate into their “Unified Communications Product Portfolio”, essentially an extension to their all-encompassing business packages. Cisco will gain the benefit of the hosted services WebEx provides, which they currently do not offer in their existing communications suites:

Cisco executives said during a conference call that the WebEx service is a key product for small and medium-size businesses. The networking giant already offers some collaboration tools, but it does not offer a hosted service such as WebEx's. With a hosted service, businesses can use collaboration tools but do not need to buy the expensive software and hardware required to host on their own network.
Much of this is relatively new territory to Cisco, who only recently began venturing outside the network devices and hardware market. It'll let them greatly expand what they can offer as a complete package. This is good for them, as they have been passed up by other companies, namely Microsoft, in offering these sorts of services.