Cisco is Gunning for Microsoft

Came across this earlier this morning:

As Cisco Systems adds more functionality to its online WebEx conferencing service, it’s ratcheting up the competitive pressure against partner and rival, Microsoft.
Cisco held a press event Tuesday to discuss how it plans to add more to its WebEx service. As the company includes more software into the conferencing service, it is competing more intensively and directly with one of its major partners, Microsoft.
“As Cisco expands this business, the co-opetition between Cisco and Microsoft will only increase,” said Zeus Kerravala, an analyst with Yankee Group. “Microsoft is strong on the desktop and Cisco is taking a lot of these software functions into the cloud.”
WebEx is a leading Web conferencing service that Cisco bought in 2007. This was Cisco’s first foray into offering a service. And the product has been very successful. As a result, the company has used the service as the foundation for its emerging big business collaboration tools. Cisco has also recently bought two other companies that it plans to feed into the service.

Read more at : http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10276549-92.html