This is a bold move by Cisco (given it's commitment to SIP) to expand industry thinking around presence as well as expanding its thinking around real-time applications given the type of development capabilities made possible with XMPP.
So suddenly, I see both Avaya and Cisco as the new thought-leaders when it comes to presence (especially in regards to "social presence").
Microsoft and IBM are locked into yesterday's view of presence and where it needs to go.
Question: What will Avaya do since they OEM'd their XMPP capability based on Jabber's platform.
The solution will show up first in the WebEx world (e.g., Media Tone Network, WebEx Connect) and then follow with an on-premise implementation.
Federation will emerge as well between the cloud/SaaS world and on-premise implementations.
Given XMPP's use within the government and financial sectors, this move will also help Cisco expand its customer relationships with those organizations.
(added after original post)
Involvement with the XMPP Standards Foundation will provide Cisco with opportunities to grow the community and partner ecosystem interested in XMPP from both an open source and open standards perspective.
XMPP support will also help interoperability with Google as well as with other vendor's in the collaboration and social software space that leverage XMPP (i.e., Jive Software, Twitter).
Overall, the move continues to help Cisco build-out a platform and ecosystem for both its UC and evolving collaboration/Web 2.0 efforts.
SAN JOSE, CA -- 09/19/08 -- Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) today announced its intent to acquire privately held Jabber, Inc., a provider of presence and messaging software. Based in Denver, Jabber will work with Cisco to enhance the existing presence and messaging functions of Cisco's Collaboration portfolio.
The acquisition will enable Cisco to embed presence and messaging services "in the network" and provide rich aggregation capabilities to users through both on-premise and on-demand solutions, across multiple platforms including Cisco WebEx® Connect and Cisco Unified Communications.
"Enterprise organizations want an extensible presence and messaging platform that can integrate with business process applications and easily adapt to their changing needs," said Doug Dennerline, Cisco senior vice president, Collaboration Software Group. "With the acquisition of Jabber, we will be able to extend the reach of our current instant messaging service and expand the capabilities of our collaboration platform. Our intention is to be the interoperability benchmark in the collaboration space."
Jabber provides a carrier-grade, best-in-class presence and messaging platform. Jabber's technology leverages open standards to provide a highly scalable architecture that supports the aggregation of presence information across different devices, users and applications. The technology also enables collaboration across many different presence systems such as Microsoft Office Communications Server, IBM Sametime, AOL AIM, Google and Yahoo!. Jabber's platform leads the market in system robustness, scalability, extensibility and global distribution.
The Jabber acquisition exemplifies Cisco's "build, buy and partner" innovation strategy to move quickly into new markets and capture key market transitions. In addition to internal software innovations, Cisco actively employs investments in, and acquisitions of, other companies to support its software strategy; recent purchases include industry leaders WebEx, IronPort, Securent and PostPath.
The transaction will be accounted for in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. Financial terms of the transaction are undisclosed. The acquisition is subject to various standard closing conditions and is expected to be complete in Cisco's first half of fiscal year 2009. Upon completion of the acquisition, Jabber employees will become part of the Cisco Collaboration Software Group (CSG). CSG is part of the recently established Software Group, consisting of Cisco's major software businesses; including the IOS network operating system, network and service management, Unified Communications solutions, policy management, and SaaS offerings.
About Cisco Systems
Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com.
Cisco, the Cisco logo, Cisco Systems, Cisco WebEx and IOS are registered trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. in the U.S. and certain other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. This document is Cisco Public Information.
Ummm, Siemens was the first to use XMPP in their first-to-market OpenScape UC application. I guess that makes them thought thought leaders.
Posted by: Anonymous | September 19, 2008 at 05:03 PM
What about all the work Cisco did for years to make a SIP based IM product (CUP) and a client (CUPC). Cisco has WebEx client, IP Phone Client, Call Center client, Cisco developed IM Client, Mobile Phone client which for System 6 runs on Nokia and System 7 only runs on Windows Mobile.. and final client Jabber?
Posted by: CustomerXFactor | September 28, 2008 at 07:37 PM