The following is Part 1 of a series on today's announcement by Cisco . What is driving Cisco into the collaboration market? There are many reasons driving Cisco in this direction (revenue opportunities, growth needs, and customer demand). Cisco believes that the collaboration market is in transition – that there are structural changes This should come as no surprise to market followers or competitors – Cisco is a company that strongly believes that its ability to grow and innovate is dependent on how well it: · Understands the emergence and evolution

Over the past several weeks, two Cisco events generated a great deal of media coverage (refer to “In The News” below). For those that have not been paying close attention, for some time now Cisco has actively been playing a grand chess game. While the media stories below fail to provide detailed product guidance as to where Cisco is going, the information does provide interesting insight as to how Cisco’s leadership team thinks about collaboration, cloud computing, The company has already made several moves in terms of acquisitions (WebEx, PostPath, Jabber) and strategy (describing a general direction regarding collaboration and SaaS/Cloud computing via WebEx Connect).

Social Networking Branded Online Social Entertainment Experiences Cisco Eos allows media companies to combine social audience features with their high-value, branded content to deliver a higher-value, interactive entertainment experience todays consumers expect. Modules include: User profiles Forums and message boards Blogs Content sharing (including YouTube uploads) Commenting and rating Activity feeds and alerts Branded video players

Highlights of Cisco's press release is below (with a link to the full release). Intercompany Cisco TelePresence Directory is a Cisco-hosted directory of endpoints, organizations and people with access to Cisco TelePresence endpoints. The directory features a virtual assistant to assist with scheduling meetings between  the more than 1000 rooms and 75 customers on Cisco TelePresence exchanges. Additional blog posts will come out later today (starting around noon PT) that will include my early thoughts. I

The following is Part 2 of a series on today's announcement by Cisco . What is Cisco announcing? To understand and decipher what Cisco is announcing, it is important to break the information down into four distinct areas: Strategic Pillars, Reference Architecture, “Extend Current”, and “Enter New”. Interoperable, Open Architecture: Given the strategic focus on Strategic Pillars SOA, Rest) to enable any device or application to leverage a consistent set of core of collaborative services.

Cisco on Cisco Implementing Cisco Collaboration Framework IntroductionExecutive Cisco on Cisco Implementing Cisco Collaboration Framework IntroductionExecutive Creating a Collaborative Enterprise | © 2009 Cisco Systems, Inc. Implementing the Cisco Framework IntroductionExecutive

This presentation from Guy Kawasaki at Cisco Live last week presents ten steps to great innovation. Innovation Matt Rhodes Required reading Cisco Systems ciscolive co-creation cocreation customer communities freshminds FreshNetworks Guy Kawasaki innovation marketing Mission statement online communities social media Social network Virtual community web 2.0 Image by always13 via Flickr As we’ve written before, right now, in the current economic climate, it’s a great time for brands to innovate .

The following is Part 4 of a series on today's announcement by Cisco . Is Cisco’s Vision Holistic Enough? While Cisco does a very good job of navigating market transitions and managing its efforts to move into market adjacencies, that does not mean that it has “perfect knowledge”. Cisco may think it knows the borders of a market in which the borders are in The collaboration market is not well defined. Some strategists include content management, search, portal, and Enterprise 2.0

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The following is Part 3 of a series on today's announcement by Cisco . Cisco needs to compare/contrast its approach with Microsoft’s BPOS – not just e-mail but overall to equate synergies from other WebEx Collaboration Cloud services. Does Cisco believe that it is now competing in the portal market with Microsoft, IBM, Oracle? Clarifications & Questions As the launch event and collaboration summit progress, additional information will be provided.