Cisco Acquires Amteva, Pairs With Ariba In E-Commerce Pact

Cisco Systems Inc. Wednesday purchased Amteva Technologies Inc., a developer of unified messaging software that enables e-mail, voice mail and fax messages to be sent over an Internet Protocol-based network.

Cisco will pay about $170 million in cash and stock for Amteva and expects to take a one-time charge of 2 to 7 cents a share in the fourth-quarter to fund the purchase.

Cisco will use Amteva’s technology to provide basic and advanced voice services over a standards-based network. The purchase is part of Cisco’s drive to develop applications that send data, voice and video over a single network.

Cisco said service providers will be able to enhance their offerings to include voice mail over the Internet, unified messaging and personal agent services such as automatic forwarding, pager alerts and the ability to be receive a variety of communications using a single phone number.

Separately, e-commerce solutions provider Ariba
Wednesday teamed with Cisco to form an e-commerce alliance aimed at enterprises.

Ariba’s operating resource management unit will work with Cisco to aid
businesses increase competitiveness through the transformation of
paper-based and repetitive operations into online processes.
Ariba said the initiative will allow enterprises to gain productivity and
save on costs.

Ariba becomes Cisco’s chosen provider of applications for online
procurement and a strategic Internet business applications provider. In
addition, Ariba has tapped Cisco as its strategic networking supplier.

Ariba’s network commerce solutions include enterprise-class Ariba operating
resource management system, which automates internal business processes combined with the
standards-based Ariba.com Network, linking buyers to suppliers.

Ariba and Cisco will target key vertical markets, align sales and marketing efforts, and
integrate key technologies.

“Cisco is very enthusiastic about the opportunity to work closely with
Ariba to provide high performance,
enterprise-class work force solutions that can help our joint clients
realize the business benefits of using
the Internet for strategic advantage,” said Sue Bostrom, Cisco’s vice president of
the Internet business solutions.

“Working with Cisco delivers
best-in-class networking technologies and provides the ability to make
Ariba’s e-commerce
solutions even more network aware,” said Dave Rome, Ariba’s vice president of
marketing.