Cisco buys Office collaboration startup Versly

Cisco on Monday announced it has acquired Versly, a young privately-held startup that develops tools to help users collaborate using Microsoft Office programs.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Versly’s plug-ins let groups collaborate using Word, PowerPoint, Excel and email. The acquisition pairs well with Cisco’s goal of increasing business collaboration and social networking opportunities. Versly’s software will be integrated into several of Cisco’s collaboration offerings, including WebEx, Quad and Jabber.

Rob Salvagno, VP of corporate development at Cisco, told VentureBeat that the company was interested in Versly not only for its Office collaboration software but also its strong team. Versly’s roster includes Benjamin Renaud who previously an executive at BEA and Sun; Erik Eccles who previously worked at Yahoo and Jumpcut; and Patrick Linkskey who was founder and CTO of SolarMetric.

“While the Versly team is only 10 people, we’re happy to have these veteran software developers on board,” Salvagno said. “Some of these folks were part of the early days of Java development and we think they will add a lot.”

On top of Office-based collaboration, a secondary aspect the Versly team could help Cisco with is developing collaboration solutions for content management.

“It’s not our number one priority, but there is potential in having the Versly team look at content management collaboration services,” Salvagno said.

San Francisco-based Versly previously raised seed funding from the likes of Accel Partners, Baseline Ventures and 500 Startups.