Cisco says it will buy UK-based IMImobile, which helps companies keep track of and interact with users, for ~$721M
Linus Chua / Bloomberg :
Context & Ripple Effects
Cisco's ~$721M purchase of IMImobile extends a deliberate software-and-cloud acquisition streak: the $260M CliQr cloud-management deal in 2016, the ~$1.9B BroadSoft buy that pushed it into telecom software, and the ~$1B ThousandEyes SaaS monitoring deal earlier in 2020. IMImobile adds customer-engagement software on top of BroadSoft's communications stack.
The UK angle also fits an established pattern — Cisco pledged a $1B investment into the UK tech industry back in 2015 through venture capital and job creation, so a British acquisition target is consistent with that stated commitment.
First-order effects
- IMImobile's enterprise customers gain a buyer with Cisco's distribution reach, folding customer-interaction tooling into Cisco's collaboration portfolio alongside BroadSoft.
Second-order effects
- Rivals in customer engagement and unified communications — the same space BroadSoft put Cisco in — face a competitor bundling engagement software with networking and collaboration hardware.
Third-order effects
- If the CliQr-to-ThousandEyes cadence holds, Cisco keeps trading hardware revenue dependence for recurring software subscriptions, making further mid-sized software acquisitions the default growth mechanism rather than internal development.
The trend: Cisco is executing a multi-year pivot from networking hardware toward software and cloud services through serial acquisitions of increasingly strategic targets.