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Thanks to Sara Kaufman for this information.

Jan Dawson, VP of the U.S. Enterprise Practice at Ovum, who closely follows Cisco, sees this move as the latest front in the war between Cisco and Microsoft over Unified Communications, following last week's announcements by both companies at VoiceCon about enhancements to their UC portfolios. “This announcement allows Cisco to leapfrog into first place in the web conferencing space, ahead of Microsoft in the second spot.” Web conferencing and collaboration are going to be increasingly important elements of unified communications in the future, and close integration between these and other forms of communication will be key to allow enterprise end users to collaborate effectively with their colleagues, partners and clients.

The acquisition also has important implications for service providers. “Recent Ovum research reveals that many providers offering web conferencing are partnering with WebEx to deliver these solutions, but are considering moving to other partners such as Microsoft. Cisco will want to secure these relationships on the carrier side as well as building up WebEx's presence in the enterprise and internationally,” says Dawson.

Here's my other entry on the topic.

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