Cisco buys Jabber IM tool

It was a big week for corporate collaboration. In addition to Oracle's big Beehive announcement, hardware company Cisco bought Jabber, the IM tool that lets you use different IM clients such as Google Talk and Apple iChat from a single interface. Seems like a strange play for a company like Cisco, but if you take a closer look, it makes sense. Cisco, like so many companies, has seen the future and believes that collaboration will play a key role. It can build IM into a number applications and take advantage of presence awareness, the ability to recognize when someone is online and take certain actions based on that.

The only trouble with IM is that it's a bit passé in a world where we suddenly have enterprise-class micro blogging applications like Yammer. Cisco might be better off looking at Enterprise 2.0 tools to help foster collaboration, but as Chris Keal writes in the National Business Review, many companies still don't even allow instant messaging, even inside the firewall. Hard to believe, but many corporations are so hung up on security, they are severely limiting their employee's collaboration options.

IBM recognized this when they announced new Web 2.0 tools for the Web Sphere portal at the Interop conference in New York City this past week. They also announced they were opening a Web 2.0 incubator of sorts in Cambridge, MA to research and test Web 2.0 tools. The question is, does IBM understand the future of collaboration better than Cisco (or Oracle)? Or is the enterprise not yet ready for Web 2.0 tools?

What do you think? Is IM still viable or is Web 2.0 the way to go?

For more information:
- see the NBR article
- read a CRN article on IBM's Web 2.0 announcement