When you think of Cisco, it is easy to classify as a network equipment company Cisco, but also has a communication and collaboration side, including WebEx. Today announced its intention to purchase Trope, a Twilio communications platform like to add telephony, messaging and other communication tools for any application.
As I wrote yesterday, APIs make it easier for developers to add functionality to a range of applications quickly and include developers based love is an ability to communicate. At TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon last weekend, most applications include the ability to trigger a text message when something important happened in the application.
Twilio is probably the best known of the communication API, but buying Tropo Cisco provides immediate access to a community of over 200,000 developers (according to figures provided by Cisco). Tropo offers its product for free to developers and made money each communication via Tropo platform. It is unclear whether Cisco will continue to use the same pricing model.
Tropos team will join Cisco Collaboration and Communication. The tricky part here is not only integrates a team that has been independent in a large organization, without sucking the spirit of it, it also has to integrate a loyal community and try to keep it without alienating. This is the major challenge for companies when buying such development tools.
Is the same kind of challenge facing IBM after buying the AlchemyAPI earlier this year. He was also an instrument with a large community of faithful who buy major supplier of traditional IT.In a blog entry Tropo friendly staff, Cisco said he certainly believes you can do it all. "Together we will help extend the Cisco platform for terminals and third-party applications via modern API and enable Cisco to better serve the developer community." Ultimately, however, this is more than a statement of objective fact.
This purchase gives a Cisco platform to attract developers to the broader ecosystem, which is important for a mature company like Cisco, trying to avoid the brutality of the interruption.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
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