Slashdot Mirror
Cisco To Buy Jabber
Danny Rathjens writes "In the continuing trend of big companies buying out small companies with open source products, Cisco has announced that they are buying Jabber. The press release doesn't really talk about the open source aspect of Jabber, and Jabber's website doesn't mention the news yet. I'm sure the question many of us have is whether Jabber's open source status will be changed in any way due to the purchase."
Reader Eddytorial had this to contribute: "eWEEK offers a good look into how Jabber's messaging client will fit into Cisco Systems' overall 'presence' strategy in its market wars with Avaya, Microsoft, Nortel, and others. Cisco, which already had a basic instant messaging option, but one that didn't scale for an enterprise nearly as well as Jabber's, has just about everything else in place." It's also worth noting that Cisco open-sourced Etch in recent months.
How long before they release the "Vista" of CIOS and turn all of their routers and switches into headaches for their base while chasing market share they have no expertise in?
Most IM clients only function on a corporate network as a result of a forgiving network security policy and a forgiving corporate security policy.
Cisco is probably thinking those days are numbered and since they are the firewall capable of blocking incoming and outgoing traffic they can convince corporate customers to block existing IM traffic and use Jabber in the name of "security".
Clever, kinda. Capitalism is not based on providing a service or product but restricting the product/service from those who have not paid the toll.
Cisco wants to position themselves to do what all corporations want to do. Lock down their networks and scan communications.
I wouldnt use Jabber no matter what it did. Its a corporate tool and the only company I ever worked at that used it blocked all IM besides it and even blocked incoming email from non-corporate addresses.
Jabber, is a nice "tool"