Cisco Systems has dipped into the M&A pool again, this time pulling out Tropo, a privately held company that has developed a cloud API platform designed to help service providers and developers embed real-time communications within their apps.
Cisco’s proposed acquisition factors into its larger “Internet of Everything” (also known as the “Internet of Things”) strategy.
“Helping people connect, engage and innovate on any device, Cisco and Tropo will provide a collaboration platform-as-a-service, which allows our customers and developers to create and sell new communications services with minimal development effort,” Hilton Romanski, Cisco’s head of business development, said in this blog post about the deal.
He said Tropo has a network of more than 200 developers, noting that the company’s technology helps them build apps that integrate into service provider communications infrastructures.
Cisco, which expects to wrap up the deal in its fiscal fourth quarter, said the Tropo team will join its Collaboration Technology Group under Rowan Trollope, the unit’s SVP and general manager.
