Cisco buys Microsoft Office collaboration company

Cisco Monday announced that it has acquired privately held Versly, a maker of collaboration software for Microsoft Office applications.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

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Versly's Microsoft Office plug-in enables collaboration around content in documents, spreadsheets, presentations and email. The software will allow Cisco to integrate social networking technologies within business applications, Cisco says.

Cisco says there are 600 million users of Microsoft Office applications, which include popular programs such as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. The acquisition will also provide more opportunity for Cisco partners to provide enhanced collaboration products, Cisco says.

Collaboration is one of Cisco's top company priorities and represents what the company believes to be a total addressable market of $45 billion.

Versly's software will be integrated into a variety of Cisco's collaboration programs. The software will allow users, for example, to receive notifications within Cisco Quad when the content of a document has changed, launch an instant messaging session through Jabber, or initiate a Web conferencing session from a presentation through WebEx.

Upon the close of the acquisition, Versly employees will be integrated into Cisco's Collaboration Software Group.

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