Now this is an interesting acquisition: ShoreTel announced today that it's acquiring Agito, an enterprise mobility vendor, for $11.4 million.
ShoreTel reported in July that at the end of its fiscal year June 30 it had over $100 million in cash, sparking speculation at its analyst and partner conference this summer that it might want to put that cash to use via some acquisitions. At that conference, outgoing CEO John Combs said ShoreTel wouldn't be looking to consolidate by buying other companies in the same markets, but the Agito buy is quite complementary for ShoreTel.
The move gives ShoreTel a native mobility play to sell along with its IP telephony/unified communications systems. Such combinations aren't uncommon in the enterprise communications space: Back in 2004, Siemens Enterprise acquired WLAN provider Chantry Networks, and of course Cisco filled out its portfolio with Linksys for the home and Airespace for the enterprise. And certainly mobility is one of the mega-trends in enterprise communications.
Agito's core product is its "Mobility Router," which provides PBX integration. The company touted its interoperability with multiple vendors' PBXs via SIP, and while ShoreTel will surely claim it's still willing to sell the Mobility Router to users with any PBX, it'll obviously be packaged with ShoreTel, with non-ShoreTel customers seeing less incentive to adopt the formerly-Agito Mobility Router. ShoreTel will be able to make the vendor-independence of the Mobility Router appealing to companies with multiple vendors in its installed base.
Agito has a very helpful video tutorial on how the Mobility Router works:
