Comments on: Cisco guns for Microsoft in collaboration market

Cisco is adding new functions in its WebEx service that could threaten Microsoft's own business collaboration efforts.

[MMC Racing]

Cisco knows hardware, but all their software apps are terrible. Their desktop phone looking VoIP application is a mess.

[Commander_Spock]

Re: "But Cisco isn't just stopping with unified communications. The company is also in the early stages of offering document, spread sheet, and presentation creation and sharing as part of WebEx. These are very clearly areas where Microsoft has a strong foothold and a very strong business. The company's Office suite, which includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, is part of its business productivity portfolio. And Microsoft makes a lot of money from this software, about $60 billion of its sales during last fiscal year came from these products...."

Well, it does appear that the "game" is getting bigger (more players getting involved in the spread sheet, collaboration space...); and, one competitor that is certain to place is IBM with its Lotus Symphony (the upgrade to 1.3 which it has quietly released over the past few.weeks) which incidentally now comes with "the ability to import Microsoft Office 2007 files into Symphony means that Microsoft Office customers can save on licensing costs by switching to Symphony while retaining access to, and easy use of, the contents of their Office files. Lotus Symphony version 1.3 is now available free of charge on the Web at http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/symphony/. In addition, Symphony is shipped with every copy of Lotus Notes and Lotus Foundations software...."

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/27757.wss

And, the losing market share is - The Microsoft Corporation.

Go IBM!

[CTO_Dude]

@commander_spock

If by "losing market share" you mean like Open Office and Symphony. IBM currently has .07% of the market according to Gartner. Sun Star Office has .06%. How much money do you think IBM is going to invest if they capture less than 1% of market share for the next five years? Same goes for Sun and Cisco!!! This is just counterintuitive to assume that they will throw tons of innovation that makes them peanuts.

[jessiethe3rd]

Seriously - Microsoft has been doing this for a while now people just aren't hip to it and places like CNET don't really cover it extensively. Check out BPOS / Business Productivit Online Services - it includes Office Communication Server (realtime instant message and 1-1 VoIP), SharePoint Online (document retention and collaboration/team sites), Exchange Online (hosted exchange), LiveMeeting (webex)

[Super2online]

I have been using BPOS for months now and love it. I also use a hosting services for WSS 3.0 separately in the same business. I love seeing competition, expecially in this area, since it will make what Microsoft puts out even better. Microsoft is on the verge of releasing Sharepoint 2010 and I expect to see some serious improvements that will send this already spectaculary successful business through the roof. Who can argue with a division that just recently celebrated a billion dollars coming in!

[forever4now]

Hopefully, all these new online office suite entrants will drive the adoption of one standard format for all office documents (e.g. ODF). Then, users will be able to pick the editing programs they like (web-based or desktop) and be confident that they will be able to exchange the documents with users of any other office suite. This would also make the migration between office suites easier.

[Commander_Spock]

These were two excellent posts "jessiethe3rd" and "forever4now"; but, the question is - when are they all going to get it right (for example - resolving all the interoperability issues between International Organization for Standardization (ISO) approved Open Document Format Standards and the reducing "90% Microsoft OpenOffice Standards) so that the banks can deal with the the "toxic assets" and "U.S. Auto Makers"... can see the lights at the end of the tunnels.

So, where are the OEMs' Operating Systems!

[CTO_Dude]

@commander_spock

What do open document standards have to do with toxic assets?

[Commander_Spock]

Question: Re: "What do open document standards have to do with toxic assets?"

Simple Answer: The Generic Development Continuum (open document format standards) upon which IBM's Lotus Symphony is based will be integrated with the Economic Rate of Return (ERR) Functionality (the antidote) to eliminate the "toxic" trash that was helped to be generated by Redmond.

"Mission Accomplished"!

[Commander_Spock]

Btw "CTO_Dude", Take a look at the contents of the below attached link the Lotus Jump Masters (Sky Divers....) are coming in the "Cloud" with a message for "The Redmond Campus". And, don't they look cool - huh! So, are you now going to bring out the "Street Sweepers..." as was previously indicated.

http://www.ibm.com/itsolutions/collaboration/

Have a nice day!

[rshimizu12]

Cisco's entry into the collaboration market is a joke. The only way Cisco succeeds is by acquisition. So far Cisco has done little or no improvements to Webex

[eudefender]

"But Microsoft has had an advantage over Cisco with its strong presence on the desktop."

I don't see the advantage. Desktop = mail and browser and office applications. With the office application and mail in the cloud only the browser is left and here competitors provide better solutions.

When you follow the cloud paradigm you will become desktop indifferent. Everyone like the MAC and even Linux is the best tool to avoid to lose office time with virus scanning. Safari, Chrome and Firefox are just fine. You don't need Windows for that.

[eudefender]

"But Microsoft has had an advantage over Cisco with its strong presence on the desktop."

I don't see the advantage. Desktop = mail and browser and office applications. With the office application and mail in the cloud only the browser is left and here competitors provide better solutions.

When you follow the cloud paradigm you will become desktop indifferent. Everyone like the MAC and even Linux is the best tool to avoid to lose office time with virus scanning. Safari, Chrome and Firefox are just fine. You don't need Windows for that.