Cisco-WebEx will define the future of computing

While most industry analysts see the Cisco acquisition of WebEx as a shot across Microsoft's bow for ruler of the collaboration seas, I see more to it than that.

This is really a preemptive cannonball fired at Google.

Cisco had two choices. Either accept being the dumb pipe, a.k.a. network infrastructure supplier, for the coming age of SaaS and other Web 2.0 applications, or enter the fray and offer services as well as infrastructure.

This acquisition obviously gives us the answer to what Cisco wants to be. WebEx, most widely known for its video conferencing capabilities, also has a very strong hosted application suite, WebEx WebOffice, offering the same calendaring, e-mail, and collaboration tools that Google has. more>>>