How Cisco-BroadSoft Acquisition Impacts UCaaS EcosystemHow Cisco-BroadSoft Acquisition Impacts UCaaS Ecosystem

On Oct. 23, Cisco announced its impending acquisition of BroadSoft, an event marking the UCaaS industry's crossing of the Rubicon.

With its inception in 1998, BroadSoft heralded the rise of cloud/hosted services and, for almost two decades, symbolized the next generation of business communications, standing tall against the "establishment" embodied by Avaya, Cisco, and the other PBX vendors. As new cloud providers emerged, occasionally referring to BroadSoft as a provider of "legacy" hosted technology, BroadSoft stuck to its guns as an independent telco carrier enabler, avoiding direct competition with its channel. With this acquisition, BroadSoft surrendered its independent status to the powerhouse of the old guard Cisco and ended an era that forever changed the enterprise communications space. At the same time, BroadSoft's acquisition by none other than the leading premises-based UC vendor provides strong validation of the industry's move to cloud.

An examination of how this acquisition, if successfully completed, will affect the different stakeholders is important. I'll leave the analysis of the acquisition's impact on BroadSoft shareholders to the financial analysts, and will focus instead on its impact on Cisco, endpoint and technology partners, UCaaS providers, UCaaS platform vendors, and end customers.

The State of the UCaaS Industry
About a month and a half ago, I summarized the main trends in the UCaaS industry and the broader enterprise communications space in the No Jitter article, "The Search for Sustainable Growth in the UCaaS Market." Frost & Sullivan's recently published studies "North American Hosted IP Telephony and UCaaS Market" and "An End-user Perspective on Navigating Digital Transformation in IT and Communications, Global, 2017" provide additional details and thorough analysis of the growth opportunities in this rapidly evolving market.

Key highlights follow here.

High growth rates continue to attract market participants and compel providers to differentiate, scale, and develop robust growth strategies. Intensifying competition is posing challenges to everyone in the ecosystem -- including:

In an effort to adapt to evolving market trends and become more competitive, some of these participants are reaching far outside their comfort zones and launching new solutions and strategies that require significant asset and skillset realignment.

Particularly notable are Cisco's, Microsoft's, and Mitel's concerted efforts over the past few years to shift their businesses toward a more cloud-centric portfolio and market position. Premises-based UC system vendors are looking to the cloud as an opportunity to differentiate, generate new revenue streams, and deliver greater value to their installed customers. Some vendors have been slow to address this challenge successfully, thus adopting a defensive stance, whereas others have pursued it more aggressively as a growth opportunity.

Market approaches also differ in terms of the vendor's role in the hosted IP telephony and UCaaS value chain. Some UC vendors have become service providers delivering services under their own brand, while others have chosen to deliver hosted communications solutions through service provider partners. As third-party platform providers, UC vendors compete against more established service provider platform developers such as BroadSoft, and as such are compelled to develop unique value propositions for both service providers and end customers.

Accelerating mergers and acquisition in the UCaaS space demonstrate a growing provider need for faster speed to market and greater market power. Cisco's acquisition of BroadSoft is an important part of an ongoing market consolidation likely to affect various stakeholders.

Continue to next page: Why Cisco?

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Why Cisco?
Over the past few months, BroadSoft was rumored to be talking with various parties, including private equity firms, Amazon, Cisco, and Oracle. My bets were on pretty much anyone else but Cisco. What I'd missed was an earlier Cisco decision to reduce its focus on Spark Calling, which makes BroadSoft's acquisition much more meaningful. Here follows a brief overview of Cisco's current UCaaS portfolio.

Building upon its extensive experience, technology innovation, and market share leadership in the on-premises communications market, Cisco launched Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS) in 2011 to address untapped demand for cloud communications in the medium and large enterprise customer segment. Cisco HCS is targeted primarily at distributed organizations of more than 250 users and creates considerable opportunities to address the needs of Cisco's existing premises-based UCC customers. Customers can deploy hybrid architectures, integrating existing systems in some locations with cloud services in others, or they can migrate the entire enterprise infrastructure to the cloud.

Cisco minimizes potential channel conflict by providing incentives to its internal salesforce to generate and pass leads on to service provider partners. Further, Cisco supports partners through volume discounts, joint marketing, training and certifications, and various other programs. It frequently assists providers with UCaaS implementations by leveraging its strong professional services resources and expertise.

In 2015, Cisco further diversified and strengthened its hosted IP telephony and UCaaS growth strategy with the launch of Spark, a cloud-based multimedia collaboration solution that's highly complementary to the rest of its cloud communications portfolio. Spark provides PBX functionality, PSTN calling, and a broad suite of team collaboration tools, including persistent group chat, file sharing, and multiparty video and Web conferencing. Hosted by Cisco, but sold primarily through partners, Spark had been intended to help the company further differentiate itself from other hosted IP telephony and UCaaS technology providers and accelerate growth in cloud communications.

Spark can be deployed as a cloud PBX or as an adjunct to a Cisco HCS or premises-based Unified Communications Manager (UCM) deployment. Spark Hybrid Services help ensure tight integration and strong synergies between Spark and other Cisco technology investments. More specifically, Hybrid Call Service integrates customers' existing Cisco call-control solutions with the Cisco Spark service. Thus businesses can use the Spark app as a mobile soft client for voice and video calling, enable instant desktop sharing for Spark users on the same call, and access call history from on-premises phones through the Spark client. Hybrid Calendar and Hybrid Directory services are also available.

In all Spark deployments, partners provide the PSTN connectivity. This setup eliminates direct competition between Cisco and its UCaaS partners.

Spark Flex plans provide additional flexibility to Cisco partners and end customers. They enable users of both premises-based and hosted Cisco solutions to leverage an OPEX payment model, which reduces upfront investments, creates a smoother path to the cloud, and helps manage all users (prem-based and cloud) in a similar fashion.

Continue to next page: Where BroadSoft Fits In

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Where BroadSoft Fits In
Acknowledging relatively slow uptake for Spark, significant gaps in Spark Calling functionality, and potential channel conflict with the provider community, Cisco has chosen to limit its further investment in Spark Calling and acquire a proven platform with a considerable installed base instead. BroadSoft's multitenant BroadWorks platform will fill the gap in Cisco's UCaaS portfolio and will address the needs of SMBs looking to adopt more cost-effective cloud communications solutions. Cisco selected BroadSoft primarily for its robust call-switching and call-control BroadWorks platform and cloud contact center business, Cisco executives said.

With more than 20 years of experience in cloud communications technologies, BroadSoft grew organically and through strategic acquisitions to position itself as the leader in next-generation hosted communications solutions. Many service providers around the world, including 25 of the top 30, use its technologies to deliver hosted IP telephony and UCaaS services, SIP trunking, and residential VoIP services. The company recently launched a new brand and portfolio, BroadSoft Business, specifically for business applications.

BroadSoft Business
The full BroadSoft Business product portfolio comprises UC-One, Team-One, and CC-One, as well as recently launched BroadSoft Hub cloud aggregation capability.

UC-One
Available both as a cloud service and a software license for service providers, UC-One includes Cloud PBX, instant messaging, rich presence, conferencing, and mobility applications for business. Freely included with BroadSoft UC-One licenses, UC-One Connect is a mobile-first application providing simplified, secure, and reliable business calling and messaging on mobile devices. It enables users to make and take calls on their mobile devices using their business, rather than personal, identity. Users can also access their corporate directory as well as remotely attend My Room meetings -- a virtual office for UC-One users that enables voice and video conferencing, multiparty chat, and desktop sharing.

The UC-One portfolio now also includes the UC-One Meet client, which provides significant value to mobile users by enabling one-click access to conference calls -- whether or not established using a BroadSoft conferencing service. UC-One Meet can be integrated with other BroadSoft UC clients, allowing users to escalate calls or chats quickly and easily to conference meetings.

UC-One Cloud PBX
BroadSoft's industry-leading UC-One Cloud PBX, delivered via the BroadWorks and BroadCloud platforms, is the most widely deployed hosted telephony and UCaaS application server. UC-One Cloud PBX scales to cost-effectively support millions of users and addresses a broad spectrum of customer requirements. Several tightly integrated platform network elements enable high levels of service reliability. BroadSoft system functionality is distributed across multiple servers for optimized performance and to meet IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) specifications.

Team-One
The BroadSoft Business portfolio also includes the Team-One team collaboration solution. Rebranded from the 2016 acquisition of Intellinote, Team-One facilitates effective team collaboration through enterprise messaging and contextual intelligence. Users can create specific team spaces wherein they engage in persistent, contextual conversations. These team spaces enable fast search and location of important contacts, emails, files, and social media interactions. Users benefit from the ability to find information fast and in context, which leads to more effective collaboration, informed decisions and business agility.

Team-One features personal workspaces for note-taking, tagging, voice and video calls, screen and file sharing, and task management. The intuitive user interface makes collaboration simple and convenient on any mobile device. Finally, Team-One features native or Hub-enabled integrations with third-party applications, allowing users to stop switching screens and focus on one space. To keep with the one-solution theme, Team-One licenses individually or integrates with the other solutions in the BroadSoft Business portfolio.

CC-One
CC-One includes chat, text, email, and social media capabilities for a more complete multichannel customer experience. CC-One also comes as a voice-only option, and integrates with Salesforce for better customer relationship management, service, and support. A key CC-One function is the integration with UC-One to strengthen collaboration between contact center agents and experts elsewhere within the broader enterprise. Finally, the integration with Team-One enables rapid team collaboration and problem solving through convenient sharing between back- and front-office workers. Further, CC-One integrates with intelligent analytics tools to support smarter business decisions and quantitative data about customer behavior -- a distinct functionality advantage for the company in the increasingly competitive cloud communications market.

BroadSoft Hub and Flexible APIs
An important new addition to the BroadSoft Business portfolio, Hub allows open integration with third-party software such as Office 365, Concur, customer relationship management platforms (e.g., Salesforce), and social media applications. Through BroadSoft Business' open application programming interfaces (APIs), software development kits and other tools, service providers can develop custom integrations and applications to meet the most stringent needs while adhering to security and reliability requirements.

Continue to next page: Uncertain Portfolio Roadmap Going Forward

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Uncertain Portfolio Roadmap Going Forward

BroadSoft Business Applications
While BroadSoft is clearly well positioned to augment Cisco's call-control portfolio immediately, the future of some advanced applications such as Team-One, UC-One, and UC-One Meet is uncertain. Both Cisco and BroadSoft have invested heavily in the messaging and meeting functionality of their respective application suites. While certain feature differences exist between Spark Messaging and Team-One, each can be further enhanced. Another important consideration is messaging integration with each vendor's portfolio. BroadSoft has enabled compelling Team-One integration with UC-One and UC-One Meet. Cisco has positioned Spark as a valuable add-on for HCS as well as a hybrid solution with premises-based UCM deployments. Current application traction and adoption are also critical factors. Verizon has launched Team-One, and another 135 providers worldwide have it in trials. Cisco has reported one million paid Spark users.

Rationalizing the conferencing and collaboration functionality within both portfolios will be even more challenging. In addition to Spark Meetings, Cisco's portfolio includes its market-leading WebEx solution, as well as its telepresence solutions. UC-One Meet is much less mature than WebEx, but integrates well with the rest of BroadSoft's business applications. After the acquisition, Cisco will need to make important decisions about whether to support the two full stacks or integrate all its various call-control platforms to a limited number of user-facing messaging and meeting clients.

Contact center is another area where the future of the combined portfolio remains uncertain. Cisco explicitly stated that BroadSoft's CC-One solution was an important factor in the acquisition decision. However, as a cloud-only offering, CC-One may be of limited appeal to the service provider community. To its advantage, however, CC-One integrates with third-party call-control platforms, including premises-based PBXs and UC systems, which broadens its applications and use cases. Team-One and Spark are also cloud applications; however they lend themselves more easily to the cloud delivery model and to integrations with both cloud and premises-based call-control platforms. Upmarket, CC-One competes directly with Cisco HCS for Contact Center. Cloud contact center is, however, an important growth area for UCaaS providers and it will be critical for Cisco to leverage BroadSoft's CC-One capabilities to better support its channel.

From a cloud applications point of view, Cisco can use the many puzzle pieces on the table to create different pictures. When developing its cloud roadmap, Cisco must also take its extensive portfolio of premises-based solutions into consideration. That's necessary so that it can offer compelling migration paths to its existing customers and effectively support hybrid deployments.

BroadCloud
Also uncertain is the future of BroadCloud, BroadSoft's cloud offering for the service provider community. In spite of some misinterpretations, BroadCloud doesn't compete directly with BroadSoft's channel, except in Germany, via the Placetel offering. It has, however, met with a somewhat mixed bag of success as most Tier 1 telcos have generally preferred to host, manage, enhance, customize, and integrate technologies on their own networks. BroadCloud has proved valuable to providers looking to address specific challenges, such as rapidly expand their geographic footprint, gain a faster and less risky access to UCaaS markets, enter compliance and regulatory-laden market segments such as government (FEDRAMP), retail (PCI) or healthcare (HIPAA), or launch differentiated vertical offerings (e.g., hospitality).

Cisco will face few technological barriers continuing to operate the BroadCloud offering. However, given its concern over channel conflict and/or need to rationalize its portfolio, it may choose to focus on supporting only advanced applications -- e.g., UC-One, Team-One, CC-One, and BroadSoft Hospitality -- via BroadCloud and let providers host the cloud PBX themselves. In an alternative scenario, BroadCloud may power Spark Calling for providers that wish to leverage the cloud model and trust their provider to deliver rapid innovation.

BroadSoft reports acceleration in BroadCloud adoption. As of 2016, BroadCloud supported 459,000 users (49% growth year-over-year), 56 channel partners (65% growth year-over-year), and $51.5 million in revenues (100% growth year-over-year). The service is available in 17 countries; availability in another 11 countries is pending.

As BroadSoft emphasized during last month's BroadSoft Connections 2017 customer and partner conference, providers can benefit from more frequent software update releases through the cloud offering. While the cloud PBX requires updates once a year on average, UC and collaboration apps require monthly or weekly updates. Given that large telcos can take months to implement major software upgrades, the cloud model can be particularly attractive from a time-to-market point of view. If Cisco makes both models available to the channel, each provider will need to make a choice between ownership and control, associated with the build (on network) model, and speed, associated with the buy (cloud) model.

Continue to next page: Much More Than UCaaS, Beyond Cloud UC and VoIP Connectivity, and Impact on Various Stakeholders in the UCaaS EcosystemContinued from previous page

Much More Than UCaaS
Important to note is that with the announced acquisition of BroadSoft, Cisco will not only gain huge market share in UCaaS, but also will effectively become a supplier of technology that enables SIP trunking as well as residential VoIP services. Since hosted IP PBX and UCaaS generate much greater revenues and cloud is all the rave, most discussions around BroadSoft and the acquisition focus on this part of BroadSoft's portfolio. However, BroadSoft currently supports and will bring to Cisco millions of SIP trunking users, as well as the potential for many more as businesses with premises-based systems continue to look for VoIP connectivity to cut costs and gain access to advanced network-based features. BroadSoft providers also support millions of residential VoIP users and can continue to grow their installed bases, though the potential is more limited due to the user shift to mobile communications.

Overall, with BroadSoft's technology portfolio added to its own, Cisco is becoming the most powerful provider of VoIP solutions to the service provider community.

Beyond Cloud UC and VoIP Connectivity
Last year, at Connections 2016, BroadSoft launched the Powered by BroadSoft program. Intended to strengthen BroadSoft's brand as well as augment service provider ability to sell and deploy UCaaS, the program currently supports 116 channel partners, many of which are reporting significant results. At this year's Connections, the company launched a new digital customer lifecycle platform -- BroadCloud Channel Support System -- and three new services, as follows:

With BroadSoft's acquisition, Cisco gains access to this powerful program, which will help it further solidify its relationships with the service provider community and accelerate the move to cloud. The program can benefit Cisco, its provider partners, and end customers. Naturally, the branding may be subject to change.

Impact on Various Stakeholders in the UCaaS Ecosystem

Cisco and BroadSoft Together
The coming of Cisco and BroadSoft together will create a powerful competitor with strengths in the following key areas:

Potential challenges facing the new entity include the following:

Partner Ecosystem
Communications endpoints and technology vendor partnerships have represented an important part of BroadSoft's ecosystem and value proposition over the years. While Cisco IP phones account for a significant portion of BroadSoft's installed base, Polycom IP desktop phones and conferencing devices hold the lion's share among BroadSoft customers. Grandstream, Mitel, Panasonic, VTech, Yealink and other endpoint vendors also rely heavily on BroadSoft customers as an important addressable market.

Cisco would be wise to maintain these phone vendor partnerships to provide choices to service providers and end customers. It may, however, be tempted to create artificial barriers (e.g., require additional certifications) or incentivize bundling of Cisco phones with BroadWorks licenses in order to boost its own share among BroadSoft users. Media gateway and SBC vendors (such as AudioCodes, Edgewater, Patton, and Ribbon) may face similar predicaments, as might Adtran, which recently launched a BroadCloud solution as part of its ProCloud portfolio alongside its managed router and Wi-Fi solutions. With Cisco possessing a comprehensive solutions portfolio, third-party vendors may find themselves having to compete on unequal terms for share among the BroadSoft customer base going forward.

Multiple technology partners provide value to the BroadSoft community, as well. These include application developers (e.g., Kakapo Systems), security and fraud prevention technology providers (e.g., Tollring), call recording providers (e.g., Dubber), CPaaS providers (e.g., Zilkr and Telestax) and others that may find their roles in the BroadSoft ecosystem are likely to change. As many of these vendors support open standards, they can continue to deliver considerable benefits to providers and customers using BroadSoft as well as Cisco solutions, if Cisco doesn't alienate them in order to promote its own technologies.

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Service Provider Channel
Several service providers have shared their positive feedback on the acquisition. Many BroadSoft providers -- e.g., AT&T, BT, CenturyLink, Evolve IP, Telefonica, Verizon, Vodafone, and others -- also have long-standing relationships with Cisco. This move can help them streamline vendor management and potentially enable compelling integrations across the two technology portfolios. Cisco has been very supportive of its HCS providers, and is likely to apply a similar approach to BroadSoft partners. Cisco's large geographic footprint and considerable R&D, services, sales, and marketing resources are likely to help accelerate technology innovation and boost sales.

There is, however, a possibility that future portfolio rationalization could have a slightly disruptive impact on the providers. Re-envisioning the user experience to include elements of Spark and UC-One, for example, would require provider as well as end-customer education and training, and potentially re-engineering of some custom integrations developed by the providers, customers, or third-party developers.

Potential Cisco barriers for third-party endpoint and infrastructure (e.g., gateway and session border controller) vendors may also affect service providers by limiting the options they can offer to their customers.

Also arguable is that, with the pending disappearance of the leading independent service provider platform vendor, the providers will lose some bargaining power. Supplier consolidation can often lead to reduced price pressures and more limited incentives for the platform vendors to innovate at a rapid pace. Fortunately, however, growing competition from Microsoft, Mitel, and independent UCaaS providers as well as looming participants such as Amazon and Google is likely to continue driving innovation and keep Cisco on its toes.

Non-BroadSoft UCaaS Providers
The acquisition's impact on non-BroadSoft UCaaS providers is likely to be minimal in the short run. Despite any portfolio or strategy changes that may eventually occur, BroadSoft providers with established UCaaS offerings will conduct business as usual for the foreseeable future. Cisco isn't likely to do anything disruptive to limit its channel's chances for success. Rather, it's more likely to seek to accelerate channel sales.

This acquisition plays against some popular notions that solutions based on proprietary cloud platforms are inherently better suited to address customer needs and drive more rapid provider growth. Cisco's choice to acquire BroadSoft, rather than further enhancing its own Spark Calling functionality or acquiring an independent UCaaS provider, validates the benefits of BroadSoft's more mature technologies, the key role of the service provider channel, and the importance of a broader geographic footprint.

Some independent UCaaS providers -- e.g., 8x8, CoreDial, Fonality, Fuze, Intermedia, Jive Communications, Mitel, Star2Star, and RingCentral -- have done exceptionally well. However, their successes can be attributed to a variety of factors, including entrepreneurial cultures that have helped some of these organizations to be more nimble than the large telcos that represent the majority of BroadSoft's channel. Platform ownership will remain a key success factor for these providers, allowing them the agility to react quickly to market trends, but will need to be reinforced by technology vision, operational efficiencies, and effective marketing and sales strategies. Also, in the short term, confusion and uncertainty about Cisco's vision and product roadmap are likely to compel some customers to more strongly consider non-Cisco and non-BroadSoft providers.

The Cisco-BroadSoft acquisition is likely to pose a number of threats to independent UCaaS providers in the long run. The merger will create a formidable competitor with substantial engineering, services, marketing, and other resources, as well as a strong brand. Cisco is likely to seek additional market share in two ways: by enabling existing partners to compete more effectively, and by aggressively pursuing new partners. There is, of course, a possibility that Cisco may not deliver a strong vision and a compelling solutions roadmap thus curtailing its channel's ability to compete and opening opportunities for other UCaaS providers to more successfully attract and retain customers.

Non-BroadSoft UCaaS providers have an opportunity to compete based on individual strengths, including advanced features, service quality and reliability, competitive pricing, customer service and support, and other differentiated capabilities.

Other Provider Platform Vendors
Market consolidation creates both opportunities and challenges for other market participants. The Cisco-BroadSoft acquisition is likely to have a similar effect on provider platform vendors such as Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE), Avaya, Centile, Metaswitch, Microsoft, Mitel, NEC, Ribbon, Unify, and others.

The creation of a powerful UCaaS competitor with a dominant market share and considerable resources is likely to shift many partner and end-customer investment decisions in favor of the new entity. A strong brand and large market presence, in terms of both geographic footprint and market share, typically boost buyer confidence. A diversified solutions and services portfolio offers the benefits of a one-stop shop. The Cisco installed base, in particular, will be much more strongly compelled to consider a Cisco cloud option than a solution offered by a competitor.

However, competitors bring some differentiated capabilities to the table that they can leverage to their advantage. Vendors with premises-based solutions can offer a better migration path and more effectively support hybrid cloud and premises-based deployments for their existing customers compared to Cisco or BroadSoft. Also, some competitors (such as ALE via Rainbow) are focusing on delivering advanced cloud-based functionality to businesses that choose to retain their premises-based PBX or UC systems, rather than aggressively pursuing rip-and-replace scenarios. Vendors with telco-centric portfolios (e.g., Centile, Metaswitch, and Ribbon), on the other hand, have the advantage of greater focus and commitment to the service provider community, which eliminates the potential for channel conflict.

Company and portfolio integration challenges are, however, likely to negatively affect the new entity's ability to focus on product development and partner and end-customer support. Confusion and uncertainty about the merged companies' portfolio roadmap, in particular, are likely to compel some channel partners to consider other vendors, either as their primary solution providers or as a back-up and/or hedge for existing Cisco or BroadSoft investments.

There is also some possibility that Cisco will fail to integrate the two portfolios successfully and create a strong technology roadmap for the future. It can make bad choices about applications, endpoints, channel support, and other important aspects of its UCaaS strategy. That will naturally create opportunities for other vendors to fill a void and boost their market presence at Cisco's expense.

Speed to market and long-term vision can determine competitor success. The global market is still relatively untapped; however, increasing market concentration is gradually shrinking vendor and provider opportunities to secure a strong market position.

Continued to next page: Impact on Various Stakeholders in the UCaaS Ecosystem: End Customers, and Conclusion

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End Customers
Unlike large enterprises, most SMBs aren't typically so concerned about the vendor and/or platform powering their services. The change in BroadSoft technology ownership is likely to have limited impact on their purchase behavior as long as the providers can offer compelling services packages and pricing.

Cisco's acquisition of BroadSoft may, however, create opportunities for BroadSoft technology deployments in the upper mid-market and enterprise. Cisco's brand is particularly strong in that customer segment and can help boost BroadSoft adoption among businesses that may require more cost-effective cloud communications solutions, but tend to trust the Cisco brand more than those of competitors.

Customers with both Cisco and BroadSoft technology investments may potentially benefit from tighter integration of their different technology stacks. They may be able to capitalize on some opportunities for hybrid deployments comprising best-of-breed elements of both vendors' portfolios.

Customers may, however, be negatively affected by Cisco efforts to rationalize its UCaaS applications suite, as this may lead to new user interfaces and the need for new custom integrations. Depending on how Cisco evolves the different technology stacks, potential changes may have a positive impact in the long run, but could be disruptive or at least challenging for existing customers in the short run. Possible strategic moves by Cisco to more heavily promote its own communications endpoints at the expense of third-party vendors could also negatively affect customers with existing investments in Grandstream, Mitel, Polycom, VTech, Yealink, and other devices. Businesses expanding their BroadSoft deployments may be particularly concerned about continuity in user and admin functionality, as well as endpoints.

Conclusion
In one broad swipe, Cisco filled a gap in its portfolio, dramatically expanded its share in the rapidly growing UCaaS market, created more opportunities to sell its communications endpoints, entered the SIP trunking and residential VoIP space, and eliminated a formidable competitor. Should the acquisition complete successfully, it will be well worth Cisco's $1.9 billion investment. Changes are likely to take place; most will be for the better, but some may pose challenges to the BroadSoft ecosystem. Like most other acquisitions, the Cisco-BroadSoft deal could be viewed as a sacrifice of competitive options for the benefit of a stronger UCaaS market growing forward.

Get more insight from Frost & Sullivan at Enterprise Connect 2018, March 12 to 15, in Orlando, Fla., in the session, "Decision Factors in Choosing a UCaaS Provider," as part of the Cloud Communications track. Register now using the code NOJITTER to save an additional $200 off the Advance Rate or get a free Expo Plus pass.

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