Cisco buying WebEx

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Cisco is buying WebEx, best known for their IP video conferencing tools for $3.2 billion.
http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php/id;522059921

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Wow, talk about a mouthfull. I can't beleive Cisco has 3.2 billion. Someone over there is trying to take Cisco in a different direction it seems. Looks like they may see the writing on the wall for networking equipment prices and their competition. I hope it works out for them.

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Cisco apparently also has enough real estate and money to help build MLB baseball stadiums.
They seem to feel application software is quite profitable vs hardware, the same direction IBM and HP decided to follow.
An article on the purchase at EWeek quotes $2.9 billion so they save $400 million right there?

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Oakland A's fan? Didn't know they had a deal with Oakland. Not sure that means much unless they bought the whole thing, did they? Looking at Web Ex you notice there stock went up first part of 07 quite a bit? I would say some folks leaked the purchase was going to happen. Still, web ex stock is worth more than Cisco... Software as a Service is the new buzz phrase in IT however, synergy and all that. Cisco makes great hardware and they have great tech support, a lot of their hardware is just too pricy now that they have a lot of competition and China is coming... Branching in to software is probably a good way to spend their surplus. Be nice if they spent more money upgrading their firmware to intelligently monitor throughput; to stop spam and internet attacks passing through a router. Since they own core routing and could have the highest impact on internet traffic clean up that would be a great endeavor for everyone. There was a push years ago to do just that but it seems to have died.

You have to wonder about the purchase though, web ex cleared about $49 million last year. It is gonna take awhile to pay for itself. But I still think Google buying youtube was insane, so what do I know.

I think it is 3.2 billion, not 2.9. Eweek is a free magazine so maybe they can't pay attention. I never read mine unless it has an article on a product I am looking to order. It is mostly adds disguised as IT magazine.

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They were quoting Reuters:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2104366,00.asp
They are quoting a 23% premium on the WebEx stock price, seems like a lot of $$. The headline says 2.9 billion but the article says $3.2 billion.

Didn't know they had a deal with Oakland. Not sure that means much unless they bought the whole thing, did they?
Cisco owns the property in Fremont where the new stadium is being built, and will have extended naming rights, and certain communications features in the new facility. I don't know the financing of the stadium but they are involved. They have a deal with the A's owners and the blessing of MLB's commisioner office. The City of Oakland of course is not happy about the deal at all.
The deal is all about bringing major league sports to $$$Silicon Valley, the new stadium will be a couple of hundred feet from the Santa Clara County line, which is important since the SF Giants have established MLB territorial rights to that line via a prior stadium proposal.

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More on the purchase here:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=LVGZISVIS5KNKQSNDLPCK H0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=198001648

Also $3.2 billion is about 2% of Cisco's capitalization.