IBM announced it acquired the privately-held firm WebDialogs Inc. on Wednesday. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. WebDialogs allows users to communicate through the web using audio and video connections. It has nearly 500,000 clients. Commenting on deal, 
WebDialogs CEO Lou Guercia said "WebDialogs technology will strengthen IBM's existing unified communication and collaboration portfolio with easy to access and use web conferencing services." The Web Dialogs service will be added to the Lotus package, IBM’s web conferencing and instant messaging software group. The acquisition pits IBM against Cisco, who bought WebDialogs’ biggest rival WebEx for $2.6 billion in May. In an analyst pre-briefing call, IBM said the new brand would be called "IBM Lotus Sametime Unyte." Analyst Mike Gotta commented, "The acquisition of WebDialogs creates as many interesting opportunities for IBM as much as it raises concerns over alignment and integration with Sametime. IBM has struggled over the years to deliver an effective and sustained solution for hosted web conferencing. While I have not come across WebDialogs all that often in the large enterprise (compared to Cisco (WebEx), Microsoft, or Adobe), I expect that IBM gains here are in the SMB (small and medium business) market. It also benefits by acquiring the reseller/partner channels of WebDialogs."
Sources: Press release, Reuters, Collaborative Thinking
Commentary: IBM To Expand Support for Sun’s Solaris 10 • WebEx: Shares Jump 22% on News of $3.2B Acquisition by Cisco
Stocks/ETFs to watch: IBM, CSCO, MSFT, ADBE
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