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Ouch! Phil lands on Cisco like a ton of bricks. He hears them Talk the talk but doubts Cisco can walk the walk. This is a very detailed analysis and indictment. Sounds to me that Cisco will sooner rather than later be out there shopping for Collaborative Web systems.

Excerpt: Color me skeptical, but I feel the detail behind yesterday and today’s Cisco Live event hasn’t matched the aspirations set out in executive keynotes. I like the vision set out by CEO John Chambers of providing a technology infrastructure that (as Oliver Marks puts it) does a better job of connecting people. I’m highly supportive when CTO Padmasree Warrior looks ahead to a future fabric of ‘intercloud’ interoperability standards — ending lock-in by individual cloud providers — and talks about ‘federation’ between cloud and on-premise. But when I look at the map of where Cisco claims to play in the cloud, I’m struck by how feeble its tenure is at each level, from the underlying foundation all the way up to both Paas and SaaS, where WebEx is its undernourished poster child, as I’ll discuss below.

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cisco google-wave cisco-ucs webex

Über technologist Michael Hickens writes about the recent Cisco announcement that they intend on competing with Google, Zoho and MOSS in the cloud collaboration space. I left a lengthy comment on this page, trying to come to grips with the meaning of this challenge. I titled my comment, "Cisco Office? Maybe they should consider Feng Office-in-the-Cloud". Good luck Conrado. Go get them.

Interestingly, Jason Harrop and i met Ms. Alex Hadden-Boyd, director of marketing for the collaboration software group at Cisco. She was kind enough to refer me directly to David Knight, the technology director of Cisco's WebEX Conferencing initiative. Alex is quoted in a CNet article at:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10276549-92.html

Cisco is striving to redefine itself as a vendor connecting inner and outer clouds, thus reasserting its relevance in the context of a fluid Web-driven IT world increasingly dominated by the likes of Google, Salesforce, Oracle and IBM. It also hopes to parlay its legacy of infrastructure expertise into a reassuring presence, particularly for veteran IT administrators struggling to balance their in-house infrastructures against the cost-savings and potential efficiencies of cloud computing.

industry.bnet.com/...cisco-google-wave-completes-us - Preview

cisco office-in-the-cloud office20 feng-office wave webkit michael-hickens MSOffice-productivity

Knock me over with a feather. Now comes news that Cisco wants to challenge Microsoft Office and Google Apps.

Paul Smalera of Business Insider questions the wisdom of this initiative, insisting that Cisco must know it can't beat either MSOffice or Google Apps.

Maybe Cisco is fishing for help? Where is that wave-maker application Jason and Florian are said to be working on? :)

Excerpt: Cisco VP Doug Dennerline told reporters, the company is "thinking about" adding document drafting and sharing to WebEx, which already features instant messaging, online meeting and email services.

www.businessinsider.com/-office-and-google-apps-2009-6 - Preview

msoffice compatibility cisco wave-maker

Cisco is making some really important moves to reposition itself in the enterprise. And it's all about the desktop. The conventional wisdom has been that Microsoft has the inside track of the Unified Communications race because it "owns" the user desktop in most enterprises. And the argument is that it "owns" that desktop because its e-mail client and office applications dominate those desktops. But what if those two applications -- e-mail and office apps -- aren't actually the key to winning the desktop in the future?

That's what Cisco is betting with Xobni and its earlier purchase of PostPath, together with its emphasis on social networking. Xobni and PostPath seek not to replace the Exchange-Outlook combo, but to mitigate their importance.

www.informationweek.com/...1GYM0K0XOHYQSNDLPCKH0CJUNN2JVN - Preview

cisco desktop microsoft msoffice outlook exchange-sharepoint UC

Microsoft has long approached unified communications from an email and software-centric world, while Cisco has brought its PBX legacy to bear with a strong voice message.
But enterprises’ definitions of unified communications and their expectations for the technology have changed. Two years ago voice was considered the cornerstone of any UC deployment, but that thinking — at least in some circles — has changed, Kerravala said.
“Presence is now the centerpiece of UC,” he said. This pushes the advantage toward Microsoft and its rich ecosystem of software partners.

www.videoconferencing-review.com/?p=239 - Preview

acn acnwireless video-conferencing cisco microsoft wiki-word

"Collaboration is the next phase of the Internet, a phase analysts see as a $34 billon market opportunity and at the center of this phase is the network," said Cisco's Don Proctor, who is senior VP of the company's software group, in a statement. "Our network platform uses open standards protocols to expose critical collaboration services such as presence, instant messaging, call control and policy to a broad range of devices and applications."

www.informationweek.com/...showArticle.jhtml - Preview

cisco collaboration

David Knight of Cisco WebEX:
"Lots of people understand that collaboration is the driver for the next wave of productivity improvements," Knight said. "The real opportunity now is to automate the unstructured interactions between knowledge workers. What we're seeing is varying degrees of success in people recognizing the efficiency gains, and thus, varying degrees of adoption. The ones that are successful are the ones that are tying collaboration to the business process. "

www.internetnews.com/...3773746 - Preview

webkit wikiWORD Chrome knight cisco webex collaboration

the growing popularity of cloud computing means corporate data centers will increasingly start to look like Internet data centers. Cisco has already recognized that as the “network” continues to become the focal point around which our digital personal and work lives revolve, the opportunity to make money will be immense. That’s why Chambers never misses an opportunity to talk about “collaboration.”

For instance, in the press release announcing the company’s latest numbers, he said: “We believe we are entering the next phase of the Internet as growth and productivity will center on collaboration enabled by networked Web 2.0 technologies.” But Cisco isn’t the only one with this vision — Microsoft (MSFT) and Google (GOOG) are thinking along these lines as well, and are much further ahead in the game.

gigaom.com/...cisco-against-microsoft-google - Preview

webkit chrome cisco webex sharepoint microsoft google

“SharePoint is the definitive OS or platform for the middle tier,” Ballmer explained. It is the “missing link” (my words, not his) between personal productivity and line-of-business applications

gigaom.com/...co-bought-webex-for-32-billion - Preview

cisco sharepoint webex collaboration

Once you add in better email and calendar support WebEx could become more appealing to the enterprise. PostPath has a Linux based collaboration system built on an AJAX client that doesn’t need a browser. Cisco added that the company’s strategy is to develop “an integrated collaboration platform designed for how we work today and into the future.

And better yet: PostPath’s pitch is that it is an Exchange alternative and a “Linux-based corporate email server.”

Let’s read between the lines: Doesn’t this sound a lot like an end-run around Microsoft Office, Outlook and Exchange just like Google is trying to do with Google Apps? Cisco probably has no desire to compete head on with Microsoft (or at least admit it), but the company obviously sees something here and coupling PostPath with WebEx could be a threat to Redmond. In fact, Cisco could be a bigger threat to Microsoft in the enterprise than Google. Why? Cisco already sells enterprises a lot of stuff. Isn’t a collaboration suite really just an extension of the network?

blogs.zdnet.com/BTL - Preview

cisco webex microsoft collaboration

www.microsoft-watch.com/...chambers_and_charlie_rose.html - Preview

2.0 cisco interoperability microsoft web