IBM Acquires WebDialogs to Expand Web Conferencing Capabilities in Industry-Leading Lotus Sametime
I'm just a bit disappointed to learn about this from my friend Dan York and not my friend Lou Guercia at WebDialogs. Be that as it may, this is a good move on IBM's part and puts them in at the forefront of some interesting collaboration space in a way they really needed. And it's great news for Lou and his team. Congrats!
IBM Acquires WebDialogs to Expand Web Conferencing Capabilities in Industry-Leading Lotus SametimeUpdated later - And in fairness to my friend Lou, I know that when a company like IBM is in acquisition mode, the news comes in a very controlled fashion. They announced at VoiceCon and Dan York is on the scene there. So he heard it firsthand whereas several of us are just catching up. The same thing happened when Google acquired GrandCentral and when NEC acquired Sphere. It's the nature of the beast. NDA's are always closely adhered to in the M&A scene.ARMONK, NY--(Marketwire - August 22, 2007) - IBM (
NYSE : IBM) today announced it has acquired WebDialogs, Inc., a Billerica, Massachusetts-based, privately held provider of Web conferencing and communications services, with more than 500,000 users worldwide. Financial details were not disclosed.WebDialogs offers online meeting and collaboration services that combine web and audio conferencing into one, easy-to-use experience. Since it is deployed as a service, WebDialogs technology does not require support from an organization's IT department, making it easy to deploy anytime, anywhere. The WebDialogs service is used by leading audio conferencing providers to extend online meeting capabilities to their users.
Technorati Tags: IBM, WebDioalogs, Unyte, unified communications, collaboration
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Comments
With the 3Com colloboration to offer IP telephony features on System i and Sametime, and now with WebDialogs, is IBM positioning to compete with
Microsoft, Cisco, Avaya and others in the UC area on a major level?
Posted by: Kand | August 22, 2007 5:32 PM
Check out the post I just sent up Kandy. There's more. Now IBM's working with Siemens. I'd say they're gearing up to make a serious play. It will be interesting to see how they fare.
Posted by: Ken Camp | August 22, 2007 6:01 PM