I know this is a Cisco focused story, however this is at least peripherally Microsoft related. I follow the unified communications market closely and am a big fan of Microsoft’s Office Communications Server product. However, Cisco is one of few companies with the R&D capital and chutzpah to challenge Microsofts place atop the throne.
With Cisco’s acquisition of PostPath, they drop in another piece of the UC puzzle. The implications of this acquisition could be very interesting. Between Call Manager, WebEx and now PostPath Cisco has all the pieces of a UC solution, however they currently lack the integration. The potential pitfall is that Cisco isn’t traditionally known as a software company, and completing the technology integration might be challenging for them. I’m assuming, of course, that Cisco plans to enter the UC market with these pieces. However, I think it’s pretty obvious from this quote from Doug Dennerline at Cisco
“The acquisition of PostPath complements our strategy to develop an integrated collaboration platform designed for how we work today and into the future, providing real productivity gains and a more satisfying user experience.”
Hmmm, it sounds like a UC pitch to me. What makes it interesting is that they’re taking a cloud approach. Integrating cloud applications with the desktop and other enterprise applications has been a huge gap in cloud computing since its inception. How would you integrate an onsite CallManager deployment with WebEx in the cloud and PostPath potentially in either the cloud or onsite? That’s the question Cisco needs to answer before they can present this conglomerate of tools as a UC solution. Believe me, it’s a BIG question.
They also lack a client piece. Where’s the Microsoft Office Communicator equivalent? My best guess is a web-based client like Microsoft’s CWA would be a likely route however again we hit the wall of Cisco’s lack of expertise in the end user software arena.
It’s a bold move but there’s a lot of work to be done for it to be a competitive unified communications offering.
