IBM Buys Web Conferencing Vendor
IBM Corp. has acquired a Web conferencing service provider, it announced as part of a flurry of unified communications moves on Wednesday.IBM will make WebDialogs Inc. part of its Lotus division and add its service to the Sametime family of products …
Context & Ripple Effects
The WebDialogs deal extends the acquisition playbook IBM has been running for over a year: in August 2006 it moved on security software with its $1.3 billion bid for Internet Security Systems, and coverage at the time openly framed the question as whether IBM was driving industry consolidation. Folding WebDialogs into Lotus and the Sametime family applies the same buy-and-integrate logic to collaboration rather than security.
What makes this one notable is that IBM announced it as part of a flurry of unified communications moves in a single day — positioning Sametime, already Lotus's real-time collaboration brand, to carry a hosted web-conferencing service alongside its installed meeting software.
First-order effects
- Lotus/Sametime customers gain a native web-conferencing option inside their existing collaboration stack, removing the need to procure that capability from a standalone vendor.
- WebDialogs' service and team are absorbed into the Lotus division, converting an independent SaaS provider into a feature of IBM's unified communications portfolio.
Second-order effects
- Standalone web-conferencing vendors now compete against IBM bundling conferencing with the Lotus install base, pressuring pricing and pushing rivals toward their own suite-plus-service combinations.
- IBM's move raises the stakes in unified communications broadly, forcing other platform vendors to answer with comparable integrated offerings rather than selling meetings as a point product.
Third-order effects
- If the buy-and-bundle pattern holds, enterprise collaboration consolidates around vendors assembling suites through acquisition — echoing the consolidation question raised by the ISS deal — with recurring hosted services becoming a standard line inside traditional software portfolios.
The trend: IBM is assembling its unified communications stack through tuck-in acquisitions around Lotus Sametime, trading standalone point tools for integrated, service-based suites.