Big news:  Cisco Systems is officially acquiring Latigent, the company I co-founded about five years ago.  After many (sometimes very stressful) months of working on this, it’s finally a done deal.  This is a huge win for our customers and for Cisco's, and it’s been one of the most interesting and exciting processes I’ve ever been involved in.  (It’s also been killing me that I haven’t been able to talk about it!)  Now I’ll officially be a Cisco employee, and I’m getting ready to pack up the family and move to Massachusetts.

Selling a startup to a technology giant like Cisco was certainly a fascinating experience--it’s one of the experiences a tech geek like myself dreams of having.  I learned an incredible amount in the process; it’s one of the most educational (and did I mention stressful?) experiences I’ve ever gone through.  I also met a ton of really incredible new people at Cisco, had a few nerve-wracking moments, and learned a lot of invaluable information about what it takes to play in the big leagues.

The Cisco folks were incredible throughout the entire process.  The whole company, top to bottom, is the best at what they do.  I’ve only worked in smaller privately-owned companies before (around 5,000 employees), and it’s an entirely different world working in a large (60,000+ employees) publicly traded company.  I came away from the process very impressed with the entire organization, thrilled to work with some exciting new people, and a bit dazed by the whole thing.  And now it’s just exciting (and satisfying) to think that a product that I helped develop and nurture being used by millions of people across the world.

Just in case you weren’t aware, Latigent makes (made) business intelligence solutions primarily marketed at the call center market.  I had a blast developing and supporting the product, it gave me a great opportunity to take some really cool technology coming out of the Web 2.0 revolution and leverage it for enterprise business intelligence.  I think I can safely say that we were the first business intelligence company to fully embrace rich Web technology, and to my knowledge we were the first with a 100% Web-based interface.  It was an incredible opportunity to introduce next-generation Web technology to the enterprise using business intelligence.  It was quite a ride, and the last chapter didn’t disappoint, either.

We didn’t build Latigent to sell it—that’s just kind of the way the cards fell.  We targeted the call center market primarily because that’s the world Chris and I both came from, and Cisco just happened to be one of the heavy hitters in that market.  Our products sit wonderfully on top of Cisco products, their customers love our product--it’s a great marriage.  And so when they decided to explore other reporting options for their call center products, they brought us in for a potential OEM relationship.  Long story short, the whole process ended in Latigent being absorbed into Cisco, it worked out better for both parties.

Chris and I will be working at Cisco for at least the next three years.  I’m incredibly excited about the opportunity; we’re being given the chance to make significant contributions and directly impact products and technology shipping from one of the largest and most important technology companies in the world.  And in spite of its size, Cisco is one of the most accessible and receptive companies I’ve ever seen, always looking for suggestions and opportunities to improve their products and help their customers—their commitment to be the best is truly remarkable.  And after being able to peek behind the curtains, I think it’s safe to say that you’ll be hearing a lot from Cisco in the upcoming years, in a lot of areas—their vision is very exciting and they are deeply committed to it.

I’ve been told that I’ll be able to continue blogging as usual, which I’m obviously happy about because I really love blogging.  I’ll be able to continue writing about the usual topics that I’m interested in, and hopefully have some exciting new topics to talk about.  Obviously I won’t be able to talk about everything I do and see at Cisco, but hopefully I’ll be able to provide some insight about the exciting things developing at Cisco and how they relate to the broader technology community.  Hopefully this fresh perspective on things and the lessons I’ve learned during this process will make the content on this site better and more interesting.

I’m extremely excited about this change, and I’ll see you Cisco folks in the office ;)

UPDATE:  Cisco stock just tagged a new annual high today, no doubt propelled to the moon due to their brilliant acquisition of Latigent ;)