Cisco Cinches Tandberg Acquisition

By Geoff Duncan December 4, 2009

cisco — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Networking giant Cisco has taken another step of its embrace of digital video technology, announcing that it has now acquired more than 90 percent of the shares of the Norwegian video conferencing and telepresense company Tandberg, clearing the way for a complete buyout of the company.

Cisco has wrestled with Tandberg over the takeover: back in October Cisco originally proffered $3 billion to take over the company, but the offer was rejected by over 90 percent of Tandberg’s shareholders who said it undervalued the company. Cisco bought a 2 percent stake in Tandberg last month, and now says shareholders representing some 89.1 percent of the remaining outstanding shares have accepted the company’s most recent offer, which values the company at about $3.4 billion. By controlling more than 90 percent of Tandberg’s shares, Cisco can make a compulsory acquisition of all the remaining shares, taking control of the company.

Cisco already offers video conferencing solutions aimed at high-end enterprise and governance customers with its own systems, and at consumers with the acquisition of Flip Video. Tandberg’s service offerings fall somewhere in between, with video conferencing and telepresense services that are affordable to small and medium sized businesses. Cisco seems bandwidth-intensive video applications as a key driver to sales of its high-performance networking gear, both to businesses that want to use the capabilities and to network and hosting providers who will need to supply the bandwidth.

Editors' Recommendations

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

Computing

OpenAI boss takes Sora tech to Hollywood, report claims

An AI image portraying two mammoths that walk through snow, with mountains and a forest in the background.

OpenAI’s new text-to-video artificial intelligence model left jaws on the floor recently when the company offered up examples of what it can do.

Sora, as it’s called, generates astonishingly realistic footage from descriptive text inputs, and while a close look can sometimes reveal slight flaws in the imagery, the technology has left many wondering to what extent it could upend the TV and movie industries.

Gaming

The best console emulators (NES, SNES, Genesis, and more) in 2024

Birdo rides through a goal ring in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe's Yoshi course.

Have you ever wanted to play some of the video games you grew up with? There’s nothing like taking a trip down memory lane with our 8-bit heroes of yesteryear, but not everyone has a classic console hanging around to re-experience these titles with. Fortunately, we live in a world of console emulators, which means you won’t have to spend precious weekend time trying to find a PS2 or SNES at that indie game store that’s 25 miles away.

Legally, console emulation isn’t exactly black and white. Because of these challenges, some of these tools may not work consistently. That being said, RetoArch is a tried and true emulator for most classic consoles. There are also several standalone emulators we’d like to recommend, so we compiled all our findings and emulation expertise into this best-of guide.
One to rule them all: RetroArch

Computing

OpenAI’s latest Sora video shows an elephant made of leaves

An elephant made of leaves, created by OpenAI's Sora technology.

OpenAI left a lot of jaws on the floor last month when it shared the first footage made by Sora, its AI-powered text-to-video generator.

While not perfect, the quality was extraordinary and left many wondering about the kind of transformational impact that such technology will have on the creative industries, including Hollywood.