Mobility should strengthen Cisco’s UC challenge to Microsoft

The battle between Cisco and Microsoft in the unified collaboration (UC) market has been raging for almost three years now, since the former acquired WebEx as the basis of its collaboration strategy. Last week, it massively expanded its portfolio, unveiling no fewer than 61 new products, with an increased focus on mobility.

Focal Points:

• Cisco pushes a network-based approach to collaboration and the integration of messaging and communications, over wired and wireless networks and a range of technologies from email to social networking. This competes with Microsoft‘s server-oriented systems and also with major UC offerings from IBM. Key among the new-look Cisco line-up are an enterprise grade hosted email system, Cisco WebEx Mail, plus a social networking application and video sharing/search platform.
• Video has been a highlight of Cisco‘s UC strategy and differentiation all along, and the firm believes the greatest growth in IP traffic – and therefore use of its equipment – will lie in video in the coming few years, driving usage to ‘exabyte‘ levels. Cisco said it is now combining new video techniques with traditional collaboration tools, in products such as the Cisco Intercompany Media Engine, for exchanging business-to-business communications over any IP network. Cisco recently decided to acquire videoconferencing specialist Tandberg for $3bn, though there have been some doubts over the completion of the deal.
• WebEx Mail strengthens Cisco‘s recent moves into cloud computing and is a stepping stone, the firm says, towards a full cloud architecture for email from 2012, with access coming increasingly from mobile devices. The new release 8.0 of Cisco‘s Unified Communications platform adds support for a far wider range of devices, including new smartphones, and new Cisco IP phones with Wi-Fi and video support. "The value of a network is proportional to the number of nodes, and there are a lot of nodes out there but they are just not connected now," Yankee Group analyst Zeus Kerravala told Techworld.

With its network focused approach, Cisco‘s platforms will be targeted at the evolution of hosted, cloud-based services in areas like UC, and the firm expects these networks to spread be-yond large enterprises into carriers during the coming decade.