Cisco, WebEx Get Unified

Talk about strange timing. About a month ago, The VAR Guy was visiting Cisco Systems’ headquarters to meet with several of the company’s channel executives. As the conversation began to focus on unified communications, The VAR Guy told Cisco they needed a killer application to really demonstrate the power of the technology. His exact words to the company were: “What you need is a WebEx-type of application.” Apparently, The VAR Guy was onto something.

The networking today plunked down $3.2 billion in cash for WebEx Communications. In addition to furthering Cisco’s Unified Communications push, the deal provides Cisco with another tool to promote its Telepresence solutions. Cisco’s current Telepresence systems resemble next-generation video conferencing rooms–complete with Web presentation software.