October is usually a big month for Cisco's TelePresence business unit. It was three years ago that the company introduced its new product. I recall that it was a real shocker to the communications industry in that this was a home-grown capability, a new product aiming at new customers, something that the networking behemoth had never done before (except for the original router product). Cisco had built itself up into a major company through judicious acquisition of little companies with technologies that the company could drive through its sales organization.

The acquisition of TANDBERG by Cisco, announced October 1, 2009 is not one of the typical deals that made Cisco what it is today since they plan to acquire a large, existing business complete with its own channels that would complement the Cisco direct sales organization currently responsible for selling and servicing Cisco TelePresence equipment.

Shortly after the announcement, Brockmann & Company convened a panel from our pool of 25,000 business users of communications products and captured the perspectives of 163 users, resellers and competitors. This is the first in a series on the perspectives of the key participants (witting or unwitting) in the transaction and discusses their views of the implications for the industry.

We discuss the user expectations on pricing, competitiveness, innovation and interoperability.