Cisco Calls In Reinforcements Against Microsoft
Cisco Systems is showing no mercy in the unified communications market. CEO John Chambers wants to bury Microsoft and Nortel. Now, he’s calling on a massive software partner to help knock out the competition.
Indeed, Cisco is partnering with SAP to develop network-aware SOA business applications. That’s jargon for “we’re ganging up against Microsoft and Nortel,” according to The VAR Guy.
Sure, Microsoft and Nortel are partnering to develop unified network applications. It’s a pretty compelling relationship. Microsoft picks Nortel’s brain about the networking market, Nortel potentially gains access to Microsoft’s channel partners and the two companies develop unified applications for Windows.
Wonderful. Except Cisco isn’t standing still. For several months now, Cisco has been working behind the scenes to line up its own application partners. During the Cisco Partner Summit earlier this month in Las Vegas, a few dozen software companies offered support for the networking giant. One noteworthy advocate included Salesforce.com. Nice win, Cisco … but where were Oracle and SAP, The VAR Guy wondered?
Now we have our answer. Cisco held off announcing the SAP partnership until this week’s big SAP conference in Atlanta. As part of the agreement, SAP will use Cisco’s TelePresence hardware and software for next-generation video conferencing in its offices. Soon, every big-name customer who visits SAP’s offices will see TelePresence in action.
Talk about priming CIOs and their bosses for a quick sale. Cisco Chief Development Officer Charles Giancarlo says it only takes five minutes for a CEO to decide to buy TelePresence. If SAP can cut its own travel expenses using TelePresence, SAP’s customers will surely follow suit.
What’s next? On the one hand, Cisco can’t jeopardize its relationship with SAP. But on the other hand, Cisco has to be weighing a similar relationship with Oracle. The chance to bury Microsoft? Now that’s a phone call Oracle CEO Larry Ellison would surely welcome.
Cisco is sh**.
Well said Sam…. but like MS they need to be cut down just a little.
SO? MS runs on just about every corportate desktop (OK, OK, there is Lotus Notes, but for the most part…)
How many desktops is SAP on? Not mine, nor anyone at my company.
And as far as telepresence and SAP goes, so what if CSCO sells a few tens of these $400k+ systems to a few CIOs? That’s not where the bulk of the market is. The bulk of the market is on every desktop, just like phones are today. And granted, you still see more trusty Nortel phones on desktops, POSs, hotel front desks, convention floors, and airport ticketing counters than you do CSCO.
Business, like politics, makes strange bedfellows. Remember that SAP and Microsoft have a strange partnership that has yielded Duet, a product sold by both companies that is supposed to combine the familiarity and GUI of Windows with the functionality of SAP.
I think it’s the right move for CSCO. It’s not uncommon for Enterprises to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on SAP initiatives, consolidation, etc. Sure MS sits on every desktop, but apple gained more market share for PC’s in the work place than both IBM and Dell last qtr. That’s only market share, I realize they had a small piece to start with. Now throw in Symbian, Blackberry, GooD, and the proliferation of devices…there is only one common denominator – the network platform that delivers those services and applications (SAP) which incurred the hundreds of millions of $ investment. It’s much more than Telepresence, but with both MS and Cisco, you need to consider the entire collaboration suite (Video, Audio, Web conferencing, IM, etc) The WebEx acquisition was also very interesting to note in their strategy.
Ok, so MS sits on the majority of desktops. BFD. What connects the majority of those MS desktops and servers? Hmmmm…. Let’s think, oh wait CISCO………
[…] smart. The VAR Guy has harassed Cisco for nearly a year, calling for the company to work far more closely with software providers in the unified communications space. When you compete with Microsoft, you have to have application providers in you corner. ISPN should […]