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).

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 Strategic Pillars SOA, Rest) to enable any device or application to leverage a consistent set of core of collaborative services.

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The following is Part 3 of a series on today's announcement by Cisco . As the launch event and collaboration summit progress, additional information will be provided. 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. Clarifications & Questions Areas where I have questions and will be looking for clarification include:

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For some time I've pointed out the need for the Cisco groups responsible for enterprise collaboration (including unified communications, mobile, WebEx, etc.) Eos was not mentioned at the Cisco Collaboration Summit and suddenly it is at the center of a social media social networking storyline that has consumer and enterprise implications. Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) today released the results of a third-party global study to be better aligned with the more consumer-centric, social media-focused EOS group(s). Case in point - below - study released from one side of the house that

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OK, I admit I’m a bit grumpy because it’s been almost a month since I answered their sales rep’s email that yes, I wanted detailed princing information for licenses and services… and have recieved no reply yet). The session started with the Jive CEO explaining a bit their vision (I still think they’re pushing too hard to try to differentiate), then one of Forrester’s VPs talking about how IT buyers decide based on peer impressions and do a lot of social software use, and backing Jive’s message (seen better Forrester presentations, with a bit of

Although Cisco has a broader collaboration arsenal than Avaya given its WebEx Connect efforts - at best, that places competitive pressure on IBM and Microsoft in a somewhat traditional way. SaaS, in-and-of-itself is not a sustainable barrier or competitive differential for Cisco. So should Avaya and Cisco "give up" any notion of disrupting the IM/presence trend within the enterprise? I've posted a lot recently regarding enterprise social messaging ("Twitter for the enterprise"): Twitter in the Workplace