The Collaborative Thinking blog is adding up all the recent moves that Cisco has made in the social networking space – its purchase of WebEx and the select assets of Utah Street Networks, among others – and says there are more questions that Cisco needs to answer before its ambitions in this space can be understood.
Collaborative Thinking writes:
1. Can Cisco transform itself into a software vendor and compete with the likes of Microsoft or Google or IBM when it comes to social software, productivity tools and collaborative applications?
2. Will Cisco be able to establish a cohesive strategy for expanding the WebEx Connect platform and supporting ecosystem?
3. How will Cisco create the type of vibrant/passionate developer community needed to rally past its competitors? What type of developer framework will it deliver that would be broadly accepted given the competition (IBM with Eclipse, Microsoft with .NET)? Or will Cisco rip a page from the playbook of Web 2.0 vendors and rely on open access to API’s and data?
4. Will Cisco reach a competitive point where it is compelled to actually deliver its own solutions in these spaces versus the cover story now that it will not become a retail social networking site? Will there is a Cisco Live counter to Windows Live via WebEx Connect? Will there be a Cisco Apps to counter Google Apps via WebEx WebOffice?
Do you think Cisco has good enough answers for all these questions?
