Cisco buys Jabber to IM Chat on the Corporate Desk
By Azam on September 22, 2008 
Cisco builds further on the corporate collaboration and communications market with Jabber IM Chat software. Jabber is the corporate offering of the interoperate able IM messaging service for the enterprise level clients. Cisco believes such tools, dubbed the “collaboration” market, can be a $34 billion industry.
“Make no mistake, we are playing to win in the [collaboration space],” said John Chambers, Cisco’s chief executive and chairman during the company’s analyst day Tuesday.
In recent years, Cisco has been making a more concerted effort to reach closer to the cooperate desk and user in a more direct presence. Cisco has been offering IP telephony and video conferencing systems and product to service clients. The push beyond from corporate background networking to serve to keep cooperate networks and information systems running lead with a major acquisition of Webex. Cisco acquired Webex in March 2007, adding online meeting and collaboration software to its portfolio of offerings. Last month, Cisco acquired Post Path for 215M for e-mail and calendaring to enhance its offering in the corporate collaboration market. Cisco will use the Jabber technology to complement the WebEx platform
Enterprise Level Communications
Jabber’s software provides additional security and message archiving functions that make it possible for financial, government and other large customers that must adhere to regulatory measures to use instant messaging within their organizations.
Corporate Collaboration Market
“We are absolutely dead serious about collaboration; we think it’s the next big thing, frankly,” Alex Hadden-Boyd, director of Cisco’s WebEx group, said. “We intend to be No. 1—not by just offering everything, but by enabling everything.”
Cisco Acquisitions Spree into the Collaboration Market
Cisco has been building a war chest to compete in the collaboration market with a number of acquisitions including: TelePresence real-time/real-size video meeting system; the Webex online collaboration; PostPath email and calendaring ; Securant for network security; IronPort for messaging security: Jabber for corporate IM Chat: Cisco enterprise telephoney hadware and software will be integrated into the corporate collaboration and communications offering
Jabber’s current instant-messaging software can work with Google Talk, AIM, Microsoft Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. Jabber’s founders created technology used by Google’s GTalk and Apple’s iChat instant-messaging applications. Jabber’s interoperability and enterprise level IM Chat capabilities gives Cisco a strong position and presence in the corporate collaboration market.
Tags : , Cisco, Collaboration, IM Chat, Jabber, Webex