Cisco ruffles feathers with new collaboration tools

Cisco Systems is once again stepping on its partners' toes and taking on new rivals as it adds new capabilities to its suite of unified communications products and services.

On Monday, the company will announce several new and enhanced software tools for instant messaging, e-mail, social networking, videoconferencing, document and video sharing. Some of these new products will compete directly with similar products offered by Cisco partners, Microsoft and IBM.

Cisco is taking direct aim at Microsoft with a new corporate e-mail service called Webex Email. Cisco has combined technology from its acquisition of Postpath with its Webex conferencing service. The combined offering gives corporate users access to their Outlook e-mail from any browser. The new service puts email in the "cloud" and eliminates the need for Microsoft Exchange servers.

Cisco already competes with Microsoft in the unified communications market. In fact, the two companies are strong rivals here. But Microsoft has had an advantage over Cisco with its strong presence on the desktop.

Competition between Cisco and Microsoft started to heat up earlier this year, when Cisco took its WebEx Web conferencing service into the cloud. At that time, Cisco executives said there was a possibility that Cisco would compete directly with Microsoft's e-mail Exchange platform.

As for the online collaboration market, Cisco and Microsoft aren't the only ones developing solutions. Google also offers document creation and sharing online. But so far those services haven't gotten much appeal outside of the individual consumer market. And it has yet to take shape in the enterprise market. And of course, Google already offers Internet-based e-mail through Gmail. IBM, another major Cisco partner, is also trying to get into Web-based e-mail market with its product iNotes.

As part of its blitz of collaboration announcements, Cisco also announced several other products and enhancements to its unified communications line-up, including some new social-networking tools and enhancements to its video conferencing and high-end telepresence solutions.

On the social-networking side, Cisco has developed a YouTube-like service called Cisco Show and Share that allows users to create, edit, and share video content. It is also introducing the Cisco Enterprise Collaboration Platform, which creates a sort of Facebook for corporate users. The tool includes the ability offer blogging, wikis, team pages, and instant messaging on an internal social networking site.

Other new products include the Cisco Intercompany Media Engine. This product allows users from different companies to communicate and collaborate with each other over a secure network connection.

On the video side, Cisco is introducing the Intercompany Cisco Telepresence Directory, which allows users to see who is available for video chats. The company also added the ability to allow Webex users to click to make video calls to users in a Cisco Teleprresence room. These video conferencing rooms are high-definition video conferencing purpose-built rooms that often cost about $300,000. Cisco also said it has tweaked its telepresence product to allow it to work with equipment from competitors, such as Polycom and Tandberg.

Cisco is currently trying to acquire Tandberg for $3 billion. But Tandberg's shareholders recently said they would reject the offer if Cisco didn't increase its bid.

[at4z]

Test comment.

[jezzur]

Test reply.

[Super2online]

This is good news. I love seeing competitors come into Microsoft's turf. It allows me to take advantage of the reduced prices they offer for software I have already been using. Thanks Cisco!

[CTO_Dude]

Actually, this has the net effect of fracturing Google. So while I also agree that this is positive for customers, I think it actually bolsters Microsoft in the long run in the same way that all the various distributions of Linux (for the desktop) killed it off in the Enterprise as well. They all competed against each other instead of winning against their perceived enemy.

[Mr. Dee]

Sounds more like CISCO is making an enemy of the entire industry.

[kaiman75]

I wouldn't trade Microsoft for Cisco. While I think competition in the industry is good, Cisco needs to drastically improve what it makes now before coming out with new buggy product lines...

[FutureGuy]

Webex conferencing sw sucks compared to GoToMeeting and they charge more.

[BRUCE 2061]

I think you are right, I bought a upgrade to networking pro and it cost $50 and I got very very little. After 3 mails got no reply .

[Redlight45]

Just replacing one monopoly with another, and in this case with the accompanying Cisco crapware. We live in interesting times!

[fgwgner]

Cool more big juicy target's for hackers to steal company info

[Graeme08]

The web based enterprise productivity segment is really hotting up. Ever since Cisco acquired PostPath i was waiting for this announcement. I was expecting Cisco to integrate PostPath's messaging capabilities with its collaboration products (WebEx, WebOffice) because thats where the market is headed (Gmail, Microsoft BPOS).

Pankaj
http://www.hyperoffice.com