Cisco Gains More Than 90% of Tandberg Shares

The Cisco/Tandberg deal will be completed after all, for the raised price of about $3.4 billion.

Cisco announced on Dec. 4 that it now controls 91.1 percent of shares and voting rights of Tandberg, meeting the networking giant’s set requirement of 90 percent of shares it needed to acquire the company.

Cisco’s acquisition means that it has gained access to a much greater portion of the telepresence and video conferencing market. And a deep recession has made it a hot market as more enterprises have shown an interest in deploying video conferencing as an alternative to business travel.

Logitech showed that it recognizes the promise of the video conferencing business, too, when it recently announced it would acquire telepresence and video conferencing upstart, LifeSize.

Polycom remains as a lone independent large video conferencing and telepresence company. Polycom also offers other voice systems. When asked if Polycom is also for sale, executives at the company said they don’t comment on such matters.