Getting back on Jabber Inc acquisition

Cisco’s acquisition of Jabber stands to be a significant boost for the enterprise IM (instant messaging) market and a clear sign of Cisco’s aspirations in the applications space.  Cisco will now be able to extend the reach of its current IM service and expand the capabilities of its collaboration platform. It will also impact the Instant Messaging market deeply.

As we previously said, this move represents a major victory for open protocols, and more specifically for XMPP against the SIP/SIMPLE protocol in the battle for IM standards.  Some have seen another sign that ‘open source’ had gone mainstream, but in this case it is much more a recognition of the value of ‘open standards’.

As several articles have stated (like for example Cisco Acquires Jabber (The Company, Not The Standard)), the acquisition of Jabber is a handy addition to Cisco’s growing portfolio of enterprise-focused web communications products. It should be noted that Cisco is acquiring Jabber the company not the actual standard. Jabber is a big proponent of the XMPP protocol and already builds and supports a number of IM products based on the standard, however in essence Cisco is likely buying the expertise rather than specific products.

Others have highlighted that the move has instantly increased the acceptance of IM as there will be increased interoperability with established IM platforms from the likes of Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! (For example Cisco guns for Google, Microsoft with Jabber buy).  With more businesses realising that IM is becoming an important communications tool the Cisco acquisition opens up a lot of opportunities in the market.

ProcessOne is one of the few remaining independent IM and XMPP technology providers. As Cisco will now be actively working with and promoting open IM standards to customers worldwide, ProcessOne’s offering to telco, web and enterprise customers stands to be significantly strengthened, as they will seek greater interoperability and security across IM platforms. This opens up a new exciting era for us :)

You can get more details on the acquisition at http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2008/corp_091908.html.