Cisco vs. Microsoft
The week began with a mutual backslapping meeting on Monday between Cisco’s John Chambers and Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer. Both tech leaders said they viewed each other as partners and competitors. But the lovefest didn’t last long as Microsoft on Tuesday released a new server for voice and video quality and published a whitepaper detailing why its product is superior over those of its competitors, including Cisco’s CallManager 5.0.
Cisco vs. Microsoft vs. IBM
Then on Wednesday, IBM jumped into the heated Microsoft vs. Cisco unified communications battle by announcing its acquisition of WebDialogs, which will compete with Cisco’s WebEx and Microsoft’s Placeware purchases.
Cisco vs. Brocade
Cisco’s rivalry with another industry player, Brocade is also getting interesting. On Monday, EE Times reported that Brocade and Cisco have agreed on a frame format for running Fibre Channel over Ethernet. On Friday, Computer Business Review reported that Brocade has halted Cisco from taking more of its share of the SAN switch market.
Brocade admitted that “Cisco did make significant gains while the merger [with McData] was being contemplated, and before then when McData was vulnerable. But now we’ve stabilized our market share,” Brocade CEO Mike Klayko is quoted by CBR as saying.
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