My friend Om wrote Cisco, Microsoft Declare Truce Over VoIP the other day. As always, Om digs in to the heart of things pretty well. He said ""I guess both Cisco and Microsoft were feeling a little bit of heat from some of the more open-source options that have started to come to the market. Asterisk-based solutions, in particular, have been gaining in popularity as office phone systems.

It's easy for me, or any industry analyst and writer, to take shots at both Cisco and Microsoft. They're to of the largest players in the industry and they' present a target rich environment. I'm not about to overlook those targets, but I also look at the strengths of both. At the ITExpo I'll be talking with folks from Cisco, and I'm setting up a meeting with a Microsoft partner in the OCS space as well.

I also looked at Cisco's web site for any information about the collaboration that gained attention in this webcast of Steve Ballmer and John Chambers. Both are strong leaders, and both lead in a style that I often criticize. I think both have done terrible disservice to the companies they lead on occasion, but we can't argue with success, and these are two of the most successful companies in the world.

Here are two quotes I've extracted from the Cisco site to set the tone:

Ballmer: We're two very competitive
companies and there tends to be a lot of media attention paid to how we
are competing now or where we might compete head-to-head in the future.
When so much of the focus is on who is going to win in markets like
unified communications, say, or in Internet-driven television, what is
often missing is the amount of work that we're doing on
interoperability-on just how much collaboration there is between the
two companies to make our solutions work better together.

Chambers: Our overall goal here is to
make very clear to our customers that despite our competition in some
areas, customers remain our overall focus. We need to articulate more
clearly how and where we are working together to minimize
interoperability challenges. Our customers are demanding this, and when
customers talk, we listen.

I'd make a pointed observation about Cisco. Chambers said when customers talk we listen. I'd say I hope so. In the past Cisco did listen to customers, but mainly the ones with the largest checkbooks. They've got a long history of over-serving high-end customers and underserving the mainstream. They don't see it that way, but ask around among your colleagues and that is a universally held opinion.

This isn't the first time these to companies have shook hands and agreed to play nice. In the pats, they've done this and immediately gone back to taking shots at each other below the radar, and ofetn below the belt. This time I hope they really will come together and collaborate. I believe they will.

I believe Cisco and Microsoft have seen the light that they are harming one another. Om and others have mentioned open source and Asterisk as threats to Microsoft and Cisco's success in unified communications. I think that's poppycock. Asterisk will play a role. Open source solutions do play a role. But they won't overtake a global, supported, commercial solution in enterprise business. Not as the mainstay for telecommunications. Companies like Cisco and Microsoft (and others like Nortel, Lucent, and Juniper) will carry the majority for many years. But the innovative new solutions will play a pivotal role in the evolution of the industry.

Cisco and Microsoft joining hands is a symbol of a future. They may join together to quash the innovative competitors, but both companies should recognize that's the wrong tactic. I expect this bonding we saw on stage will herald a new two-year flurry of acquisition and adoption. I suspect they both sensed what I sensed from Google's acquisition of GrandCentral too. There's another large player entering the telecom ring. Neither Cisco or Microsoft can singlehandedly drive Google to the ropes. They need an alliance to prevail. It's always better to partner with the enemy you know.

Microsoft needs to acquire someone like iotum to help gain real-world understanding of presence and availability in a more global sense. They tend to be too enamored of their own solutions and not as open as they might to small players who do it better. Cisco could to with the same mindset. Companies like Covergence or Acme Packet would help fill one void.

Microsoft and Cisco both excel at acquisition. Both have plenty of money. Both are weaker and using their acquisitions wisely, leaving us to sometimes wonder if an acquisition was simply the act of taking an innovative upstart out of the market.

I'm going to be watching these two closely over the next year. If they were serious, and really take to heart the words they mouthed on stage, there are going to be some very interesting changes ahead.



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