Cisco slurps Acano for $700m

Cisco is to hoover up London-based video conferencing and collaboration tech outfit Acano for $700m.

The Uxbridge-based organisation, whose software bridges the gap between the physical and the cloud-based worlds, was founded in 2012 by former Cisco and Tandberg staffers. It has offices in the UK, US and Australia.

The conferencing and collaboration wares bring together services from Cisco, Lifesize, Tandberg and Microsoft, with the latter indulging users in full integration with Skype got Business and Lync.

Cisco said less than 10 per cent of conference rooms are connected via video and just one per cent of users have video system on their desktop.

According to Cisco’s Visual Networking Index, the report on global web traffic patterns, IP video is estimated to comprise 80 per cent of global Internet footfall by 2019, up 67 per cent from 2014.

The Acano people will be tucked into Cisco’s Collaboration Technology Group run by Rowan Trollope. In calendar ’14, the company turned over $17.6m versus $2.3m in the prior year.

Costs went through the roof, with admin expenses jumping from $6.8m to $19.62m due in no small part to a massive hike in staff wages and salaries as headcount more than doubled to 80. Higher operating lease costs and depreciation also weighed in.

Operating loss for the year was $6.6m from an operating loss of $5.15m and after a tax benefit the net loss was $5.4m from $4.5m

This is the eleventh acquisition Cisco has made this year and the second in the area of collaboration tech, a part of the business for the networking giant that turned over $1.1bn in the most recent quarter. ®