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Cisco Systems announced its sixth acquisition since Chuck Robbins took over as CEO. The networking giant said today that it will pay $700 million for Acano, a London-based company that specializes in video conferencing and collaboration technology.
Acano’s technology connects different video conferencing services that wouldn’t normally work together, including Skype for Business and Micrsoft Lync. The deal will help Cisco improve the interoperability of its video conference products, Cisco corporate VP for business development Rob Salvagno wrote in a company blog post.
Cisco has argued that video communications will eventually dominate how people communicate on the Internet. Data from its annual Visual Networking Index, a report on global Internet traffic trends, shows that video made up more than two thirds of all Internet traffic last year and is projected to reach 80 percent by 2019.
The Acano team will become part of Cisco’s Collaboration Technology Group, a business unit led by Rowan Trollope. The collaboration business is a fast-growing one for Cisco; in its most recent quarter, it grew 17 percent year on year to about $1.12 billion in revenue and accounted for about 9 percent of Cisco’s business overall.
Acano is Cisco’s 11th acquisition this year, and the second this year to focus on video technology. Last month, it said it would acquire 1Mainstream, a privately held company focused on building an on-demand video product.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
