Industry icons Steve Ballmer and John Chambers met during a webcast today and discussed how their visions, and maybe one day their products, would merge into a single “unified communications systems.” Don’t confuse this with Microsoft’s various products labeled, in one form or another, unified communications. What Chambers and Gates foresee is more like a single utility that ties together e-mail, phones and other IP-based tools built on Cisco and Microsoft products.
Interesting. Because Microsoft continues to push into the convergence market. Its sweeping joint marketing agreement with Nortel certainly couldn’t have scored it any points with Cisco. Nor could products like Office Communications Server 2007. Cisco, for its part, wants to dominate the VoIP market. It also is sneaking into consumer markets, with its purchase of Scientific-Atlanta and its vision of a home networking empire. This could eventually put it at odds with Microsoft’s endless home computing initiatives.
The two are also butting heads in other areas, such as security, with each creating their own Network Access Control schemes (though about a year ago, the two released schematics that show to get the two NAC systems to interoperate.) During the meeting Ballmer acknowledged this by saying he was aiming for “respectful competition” with Cisco, reports Reuters. “There are plenty of competitors that you just don’t talk to, or things get acrimonious,” Ballmer said. “That’s not where we want to go with Cisco.”
Chambers vowed that the two companies would cooperate for the sake of the customer. “Even where we’re going to compete, what the customer wants to know is, ‘Tell me how to interoperate. Don’t make me throw away one relationship because of the other,”‘ Chambers said.
Also see: Ballmer, Chambers head-to-head
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