Forget the industry politics of NOISE (Netscape, Oracle, IBM, Sun and Everyone else) vs. Microsoft. We’re now talking CAGE (Cisco, Apple, Google and Everyone else) vs. Microsoft, according to Mike Gotta’s Collaborative Thinking blog.
CAGE vs. Microsoft “draws a distinction between vendors focused on use of technology across all facets of digital life and those that still consider digital work to be a separate domain,” writes Gotta.
He adds:
An Apple arrangement with Cisco and/or Google could establish a “digital life” counter to traditional enterprise software solutions that organizations might not be able to (or want to) resist as the workplace becomes more nomadic and workforce demographics continue to shift in favor of younger workers who will bring along with them certain technology expectations.
Cisco also seems to understand the blurring lines between digital life and work but it seems to be moving more pragmatically. The WebEx acquisition provides Cisco with the WebEx Connect platform (a hosted SaaS environment) that could be combined with Cisco’s efforts related to social networking. Add to this, Cisco’s strengths in networking and unified communications and you can envision how the company can exploit a digital life strategy across its other lines-of-business (especially if it can work out an arrangement with Apple and Google).
Does Gotta have a point?
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