Understanding Cisco-Microsoft cooperation

My last post has been quite a while back. Have been busy trying to wrap up a mobile application report. In the meanwhile there has been significant developments in our space. I'll try to comment on them in the coming days.

Recently, John Chambers and Steve Ballmer shared the podium at an event in New York that was moderated by Charlie Rose. They announced that both companies would drive interoperability between their products. There is an interesting blog by NY times summarising the event. In my opinion, the discussion at the event bore a clear indication of a transition to 'best-of-breed' infrastructure sourcing amongst large customers. This came out loud and clear in two of my conversations yesterday. Earlier in the day, in a conversation with a good friend at Siemens, the success story of HiPath 8000 with Global Crossing came up. Later that evening, Eric Swift from Microsoft highlighted ICA's success with Global Crossing. Now thats a coincidence! It is well known that both ICA and Siemens have capabilities to have pitched for both of those RFPs with Global Crossing.

Another aspect of the announcement is the recognition of the market transition to convergence and collaboration. I remember listening to a Digital 2.0 panel discussion conducted by Jeffrey Moore, where Bill Gates evangelised the scope of digitisation. He urged us to think as if computing and storage were free. The scope of digitisation is indeed far reaching enabled by software. He mentioned communication, collaboration and group productivity as the areas where innovation will concentrate. Similar thoughts ware put forward by fellow panelist John Chambers who argued the next transition to be from transaction to interaction caused by innovation in the realm of collboration and convergence.

With both Microsoft and Cisco looking at the same market transition through their individual lenses, customers have started demanding that their products interoperate. This according to me is the fundamental underlining for their cooperation. The best-of-breed strategy that this alliance endorses will help unleash intellectual capital for innovation in the enterprise space that hasn't yet seen the success that consumer market continues to enjoy.