Friday, 9 June 2006

Cisco to Acquire Metreos, Audium

Cisco Systems Inc. has agreed to acquire privately held companies Metreos Corp. of Austin, and Audium Corp. of New York, in two separate deals. Both of these companies offer easy to use, drag and drop, application creation/integration environments which will strengthen Cisco's Service Oriented Network Architecture (SONA).

In March 2006, Cisco announced its Unified Communications system, based on Cisco's SONA, which enables enterprise customers to integrate their communications systems with their IT infrastructure, thereby creating a single enterprise-wide communications platform.

Metreos is a provider of IP communication application development and management environments. The acquisition will help Cisco's ecosystem of third party technology partners, systems integrators, value-added resellers, and customers build and deliver applications on Cisco's Unified Communications System.

Audium is a provider of VoiceXML speech self-service application development and management environments. The acquisition will enable enterprises to easily build automated voice response applications that are integrated with not only their converged IP network but also work well within their Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) enabling the use of common services across the network.

Under the terms of these agreements, Cisco will pay about USD 28 million in cash for Metreos and USD 19.8 million in cash for Audium. The deals are expected to close in the fourth quarter of Cisco's fiscal year 2006, ending July 29, 2006.

Upon close of the transaction, Metreos and Audium products will be integrated into the Voice Technology Group, reporting into Proctor.