Cisco Buys PostPath - Path to Unified Communications ?

Cisco announced today that it is buying PostPath for $215 million for the entire stock in PostPath. In the podcast by Cisco they tie WebEx collaboration and their Unified Communications story. Hmm - Collaboration and Unified Communications. Oh yeah Cisco throws in Web 2.0 in there. What is Unified Communications? Is it Web 2.0 or old school VoIP. From the Cisco announcement it looks like Unified Communications is shaping up to be Web 2.0 with a business model.

I’ve been saying that Web 2.0 is all about relationships - collaboration on the web is just that. This could be a great move for Cisco if they move fast to show benefits to users. Unfied Communications sector has been crippled lately because the benefits just aren’t being highlighted. The problems are compounded by the fact that no one can define Unified Communications.

From Cisco’s press release .. Building upon its commitment to provide a comprehensive collaboration portfolio, Cisco today announced its intent to acquire privately held PostPath, Inc., a provider of innovative email and calendaring software. Based in Mountain View, Calif. with additional development operations in Sofia, Bulgaria, PostPath will enhance the existing email and calendaring capabilities of Cisco’s WebEx Connect collaboration platform.

Here are the details on this announcement from Cisco’s Doug Dennerline blog - actually posted by PR. Doug is the SVP of Cisco’s Collaboration Software Group.

Doug writes on his blog … Communications, globalization and automation have flattened the world and transformed the competitive landscape. The traditional competitive advantages of size and scale have been replaced by speed and flexibility. In this new world, effective, adaptive collaboration is critical to achieving sustainable competitive advantage.

Today’s acquisition of PostPath is part of our commitment to create a comprehensive cloud-based collaboration platform. By offering an on-demand version of the PostPath solution, we can provide flexible, cost-effective email and calendaring integrated with our collaboration portfolio of Cisco Unified Communications, WebEx and Business Video.

PostPath’s Linux-based email, calendaring and collaboration solution is highly secure and scalable, and incorporates an innovative Web 2.0 architecture to meet the requirements of enterprise customers and small businesses. It’s interoperable with many different email solutions, offers an AJAX web client and is compatible with a broad range of mobile devices.