LIVE FROM BROADSOFT CONNECTIONS 2017, PHOENIX, US: Cisco’s $1.9 billion acquisition of BroadSoft will open the door to a new relationship with smartphone vendor Apple, executives said.

Speaking on the opening day of BroadSoft’s annual customer conference Rowan Trollope, SVP and GM of IoT and applications at Cisco, said his company’s long-standing relationship with Apple will carry over to BroadSoft’s product suite after the deal is closed.

“All the work that we’ve done with Apple really actually benefits BroadSoft users as we bring that relationship to the BroadSoft engineering team and get the technology on that side fully adopting all Apple capabilities,” Trollope said, noting the benefit is particularly great given the shift to mobile work on smartphones: “I view that as a big upside from a user experience perspective on iOS devices.”

When asked about how a new mobile relationship with Apple could translate into new products and services, BroadSoft CTO Scott Hoffpauir reported the top request from customers across both iOS and Android is the ability to support a dual persona on one device. The capability allows a single device to operate different accounts covering, for example, phone numbers, calls and messages so users know what account they’re using at a given moment.

BroadSoft counts dominant US wireless carriers AT&T and Verizon among its operator customers, which generally resell BroadSoft’s products to their own enterprise clients. According to data shared at the conference, 63 per cent of BroadSoft’s customer base is located in North America, while 22 per cent are in EMEA. Tier-1 companies make up 46 per cent of BroadSoft’s customer mix.

Additional insights
Beyond the mobile angle, BroadSoft and Cisco executives shared additional details around their merger arrangement, noting key BroadSoft leadership will stay on and the combined entity will offer a single product suite to customers.

Trollope and BroadSoft CEO Michael Tessler revealed the logic behind the deal is to combine Cisco’s strengths in meetings and messaging with BroadSoft’s expertise in calling and care centre products. Though some products from the individual companies are redundant, Trollope and Tessler said the merged company will aim to streamline and present a single product face to the market. The goal, they said, is not to confuse customers with too many offers.

The combined company will also be able to reach a broader swathe of the market, with Cisco’s base of larger enterprise customers complementing BroadSoft’s focus on small and medium businesses.

While the merged entity will be able to offer flexibility with on-premise, cloud and hybrid options, BroadSoft executives acknowledged there is a distinct shift in the market to focus on cloud-based solutions. Those, the executives said, offer agility and quicker time to market, features which are valuable to customers.