Cisco's acquisition of Jabber, the acknowledge pioneer of presence, illustrates its goal of putting applications on the network. According to Cisco's Platform blog, the purchase will enable the network giant to "provide presence and messaging as network services." Cisco will provide that capability to its collaboration products: unified communications, WebEx and business video. The technology will also enable collaboration across third-party presence software from Microsoft, IBM/Lotus, AOL, Google and Yahoo. In his Cisco Subnet blog, Larry Chaffin asks: "Is Cisco worried that Microsoft is moving ahead? I think that Microsoft has a better interface for its Client product and now that they have drawn off the Nortel MCS5100 it is even better. Cisco is looking to make its client better and not so blah." 

Cisco and Jabber first unveiled their collaboration in January when they announced the integration of their real-time communications wares designed to give users access to Web conferencing features from the Jabber instant messaging client. Read more about that deal here. How much does Cisco's purchase of Jabber put a dent in Microsoft's collaboration platform?

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