Will Cisco, Google and Microsoft be the Big 3 for collaboration?

So Cisco has identified online collaboration as a $34 billion market – would that include tools like instant messaging that are free to use and advertising sponsored – which is not a business model that Cisco currently engages in?It seems as if the deeper meaning of its newly minted collaboration product portfolio is two-fold. One, Cisco wants to be seen as an application delivery platform – not just a network gear provider. That gives it a whole 'nother level of stuff to sell to its users in its attempt to become all things to all networks. Two, it is duking it out with Microsoft over unified communications.

Collaboration tools start to make more sense in this second context as do offerings that compete with Microsoft (and Google) for instant messaging, online conferencing and the like. Of particular interest to Microsoft will be how Cisco integrates its UC software with Windows such as Windows Mobile, while supporting popular competing platforms such as BlackBerry. Microsoft does a poor job of "co-opetition" preferring to squash competitors, rather than work with them (although it does have some partnership agreements with BlackBerry.) This allows a "third-party" like Cisco to walk in, make agreements with multiple mobile OS competitors and become instantly attractive to the enterprise.

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