Jabber, Cisco, Avaya, Siemens: The Benefits and Disruptions of an IM AcquisitionJabber, Cisco, Avaya, Siemens: The Benefits and Disruptions of an IM Acquisition

As Eric pointed out Cisco's acquisition of Jabber is all about the company delivering a unified communications solution that can go head to head with Microsoft. With its Unified Communications Manager, Unified Presence Server, Unified Personal Communicator, and other software, Cisco has been able to deliver a UC solution with decidedly strong telephony capabilities, but comparatively weak corporate-grade instant messaging features.

As Eric pointed out Cisco's acquisition of Jabber is all about the company delivering a unified communications solution that can go head to head with Microsoft. With its Unified Communications Manager, Unified Presence Server, Unified Personal Communicator, and other software, Cisco has been able to deliver a UC solution with decidedly strong telephony capabilities, but comparatively weak corporate-grade instant messaging features.To date, Cisco customers deploying a full-blown unified communications solution have been encouraged to integrate their Cisco Communications Manager IP PBXs with either Microsoft Office Communications Server or IBM Sametime. Alternatively, Cisco's Unified Presence Server has instant messaging software built right into it. But this home-grown IM capability is not something Cisco has drawn a lot of attention to. All the data sheets, configuration guides, installation manuals and all other Presence Server product literature I've ever come across completely gloss over its inherent IM capabilities. I get the impression that the Cisco-designed IM software is not quite up to snuff compared with alternatives from Microsoft and IBM. Jabber will provide Cisco with a much more robust alternative: an IM platform that is highly scalable, very secure, and able to federate with public IM services of the AOL AIM and Yahoo! Messenger variety.

At the same time, the Jabber acquisition is expected to wreak a certain amount of havoc in the unified communications market. Avaya chose Jabber as the instant messaging software at the heart of its new Intelligent Presence Server offering. And Siemens Enterprise Communications recently added Jabber support to its OpenScape UC Server in a move meant to break its IM dependence on Microsoft. These companies now have to decide whether they are going to maintain Jabber support for their existing customers, opt to support the open source version rather than the commercial version of Jabber XMPP software, or support IM software owned by their fiercest rival in the unified communications market.