Cisco Closes Tandberg Acquisition

At long last, Cisco has closed its acquisition of Tandberg, ending a battle for the videoconferencing equipment manufacturer that began last October. As of close of business Monday, Cisco owned all outstanding Tandberg shares. Price: $3.3 billion, a bit more than the $3.0 billion it first offered for the company. A pricey, but savvy acquisition. Tandberg’s lower-end TelePresence systems and specialized software for managing teleconferences will do much to help Cisco dominate the $34 billion collaboration market, which is growing — and quickly too. It’s worth noting that last year year, Gartner (IT) forecast that video telepresence could replace 2.1 million business travel flights a year by 2012, diverting $3.5 billion annually from the airline industry.