Broadband Developments

What it means is that Cisco Systems is serious about collaboration and Microsoft and IBM had better take notice.

Jabber will integrate into the collaboration software group.   Consider their purchase of Postpath, a messaging platform designed as a replacement for Microsoft’s Exchange.  Cisco’s collaboration offering has now added secure instant messaging.

Along with their strengths in voice conferencing, WebEx web conferencing, telepresence, and the most recent addition of enterprise email solution, Cisco has put together a package with enormous potential and value.  Given the right execution, integration, and presence, Cisco is putting together what is probably the market-leading offering.  Also let’s not overlook the value of a one-stop enterprise solution.

Another interesting point is the very nature of Jabber thickens the plot.  Jabber is built with the objective of scalability, it’s that nature that allows it to connect across all the major instant message services such as AOL, Yahoo, ICQ, Windows Live, etc.  Could that compatibility be built in to hardware devices that Cisco builds?  You bet.  Meaning devices, services can message instantly on a whole bunch of information.  And control much information as well.  Absolutely that’s part of where they will go with this.  Also look for integration to WebEx conferencing.  Jabber’s scalability features will certainly help in the move to the cloud.  Once again it all comes down to integration.

And Cisco isn’t done shopping yet, if Cisco analysts are to believed, they have other targets to fill up their bets on their buzzword focus namely, video, collaboration, and virtualization.   Meanwhile Ebay is sitting on Skype, another hot property that fits into the Unified Communications puzzle.

Cisco is fleshing out their strategy, in compelling fashion.  Now, it’s up to Cisco to deliver on integration, security and reliability.  Will corporations sign on?  Yeah I think so.  And the whole paradigm has just moved over to Cisco.  Who’s next?
The day of Unified Communications is nigh.

Just a short note on Google Chrome. I downloaded it today to try it out. I had not idea how hard that would be. The download was easy but it doesn’t seem to work with a lot of webpages. Most importantly for me if you try to visit Outlook Web Access the Exchange 2007 CAS server will force you into downlevel “OWA Light”. Any browser I use absolutely must support the full functionality of OWA. Maybe I shouldn’t have had such high expectations from a beta product but I expected more from Google given all the hype.

My opinion is Chrome will have a somewhat limited use scenario once the novelty wears off. There’s a lot of potential with google app integration, but the web is full of unrealized potential (see Google, youTube, monetization).

Mitch a a blogger at MitchGarvis.com writes a blog post talking about how his hosting provider recently enabled Unified Communications.  Mitch tells his story about his experience.

Mitch goes on to say..  Microsoft has been talking about Unified Messaging for a couple of years now, and I have been interested in it since the outset but because I do not always have the infrastructure (or the time) to do a lot of the things I would like to do, this (among myriad others) has fallen by the wayside.

My own mail domain is actually managed by an online hosting provider that has recently enabled Unified Communications… and the other day they sent me an e-mail telling me that I could now set up my voice mail to forward to their server.

The cool features I got to play with last night:

• Voice Mail from my Inbox: I left myself a voice mail (at 1:30am there aren’t too many other people to talk to… even the puppies were asleep).  Within seconds I received an e-mail not only telling me I had a voice message… but it allowed me to play it right from my Inbox.
• Listen to my e-mail: I called in an after entering my secure code I was able to not only listen to my voice mail, but could navigate my Inbox and have the pleasant female voice read my e-mails to me.  I could then reply and go on to the next one.  Really cool!
• Hear my calendar: I saw a video last year that was a take-off of The Devil Wears Prada (a movie I have not seen but I am assured the characters are spot on).  In it the Administrative Assistant uses all sorts of features that look like magic, including talking to her Calendar and telling it that she will bee ten minutes late for a meeting (the pleasant female voice then assures her that ’she’ would notify all meeting attendees).  I always thought it was cool, but did not realize how easy it was to do…   I did not actually reschedule meetings, but I did get to hear how busy my day would be today.
• All the normal Voice Mail options…: Of course I was able to change my pin, record my name, change my OGM (I opted to use the pleasant female voice rather than my own).  These are all features we expect to be able to do with voice mail… but with Exchange?