Cisco reels in Latitude

After attending a conference late last week and taking a few days of R&R, I was going to belatedly post some news about Latitude’s new PowerPoint-to-Flash server/service called MeetingPlace iCreate. But today’s news from the company trumps that: Latitude is being acquired by Cisco for $80 million cash, a nice chunk of change for Latitude’s investors and walking-around money for Cisco. Cisco says it is acquiring Latitude to help round out its multimedia portfolio with Latitude and its flagship MeetingPlace audio and Web server becoming part of the Voice Technology Group. The two companies already have a pretty tight integration, so the merger from a technology perspective should be smooth. Cisco expects the deal to close sometime in the second quarter next year.

What makes the deal pretty big is the fact Cisco is putting its weight behind the premise-based audio and Web conferencing. Most companies outsource this functionality to the likes of WebEx or the big telcos. With Cisco pushing the premise-based market, companies may feel more at ease deploying conferencing servers in their own data centers. What are your thoughts? E-mail me at jmeserve@nww.com or click the comment button below.