Cisco Software Acquistion Targets Microsoft Office Users

Cisco's ongoing corporate restructuring

Cisco Monday said it acquired Versly, a San Francisco-based company specializing in how collaboration tools integrate via plug-in to Microsoft office. It will give Cisco's collaboration products more appeal for the Microsoft Office user base of 600 million users, according to Cisco.

Financial terms of the acquisition weren't provided. Versly's employees will become part of Cisco's Collaboration Software Group (CSG), the company said.

Collaboration has been a bright spot for Cisco even among several quarters of lackluster earnings and strategic refocusing. In the fourth quarter of Cisco's fiscal 2011, Cisco reported revenue in its collaboration unit up 11 percent year-over-year, with TelePresence products specifically growing 24 percent.

The Collaboration group houses Cisco offerings like Quad, Jabber and WebEx, into which Cisco said it will integrate Versly's software. Collaboration, according to Cisco, is a total addressable market of about $45 billion.

"With this acquisition we are gaining strong talent and innovative technology that builds on Cisco's collaboration platform," said Ned Hooper, senior vice president and chief strategy officer at Cisco, in a statement. "We continue to expand our collaboration architecture to change the way businesses work."

Versly is Cisco's second acquisition in as many weeks following several months of quiet on Cisco's M&A front. Cisco last week said it will pay $31 million for network management software assets called AXIOSS and employees from Finland-based Comptel Corp.