As the rapidly developing mobility and cloud markets transform the technology landscape, the population of mobile workers looking to extend the boundaries of their offices continues to grow. They want to connect, communicate and collaborate seamlessly, and their organizations are seeking user-friendly, mobile-centric collaboration tools that enable teams to work faster while being as productive as possible.
Today, I am pleased to announce Cisco’s acquisition of Collaborate.com to help capture this market transition in mobility and cloud. Collaborate’s skilled team of cloud and mobile software developers has created a mobile collaboration application that provides unified document sharing, task management and team communication capabilities, enabling today’s mobile workforce to collaborate with team members on projects. Workers can instantly create virtual collaboration rooms where they can chat and share documents, notes, photos and videos.
Collaborate’s platform integrates with email and third party cloud services to make collaborating efficiently with others while on-the-go that much easier. Collaborate’s flexibility also enables teams to integrate collaboration and communication into their enterprise workstreams, as the application helps keep teams aligned and accelerates decision-making.
Cisco’s acquisition of Collaborate supports our goal of driving market leadership in Collaboration. Together, Cisco and Collaborate plan to provide a comprehensive solution that enables the mobile workforce to work smarter and more efficiently from virtually anywhere. Collaborate’s cutting-edge technology and strong engineers as part of Cisco’s Collaboration Technology Group will help accelerate Cisco’s innovation in Collaboration.
With deep experience building innovative mobile-centric collaboration experiences, we are excited about the new opportunities the addition of Collaborate and its talented group of individuals will provide to Cisco. The Collaborate team will enhance our ability to deliver industry-leading solutions and unique value to our customers.
Interested to see how or, indeed if, this integrates with WebEx Social? Is that part of your potential roadmap?
Thanks Tim. Collaborate has unique collaboration technology and a strong team of engineers with deep cloud, mobile, and web expertise that will help accelerate Cisco’s innovation in collaboration. Cisco’s offerings in collaboration software are ideal for organizations seeking to improve business productivity and collaborate more effectively in the workplace. Teams will be able to work together to better collaborate on projects and seamlessly work on and share documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.
There seems to be a related concept within our own in-house patent portal.
Very Intresting Topic
looks like a very young and small start-up. Technically this is what I saw:
1. Integrates external storage – dropbox, etc.
2. Open source possibly
3. concentrates on Apple IOS for mobility and Google email
4. Geared for (maybe) social interaction and (Very) SMB.
May extend WebEx a bit, but I am holding my opinion on security, privacy, etc. Am not sure how scalable it is. Possibly, they have some patents we are interested in.
Hi Hilton. My teammates and I use webex social a lot for our projects/work. I am wondering if I should keep moving content to webex social, or will this platform replace webex social/CEC? Are there any timelines in place for this?
Thanks
Jeff
The key question is about security aspect of collaboration content. It is not clear what is the target customer, scalability, and if it will be applied inside Cisco.
Thanks,
Zbigniew
When can Cisco teams get access to it? We love new tools.
Hi Hilton, We use the Webex Social platform for our collaboration/communication needs. That’s mainly our shared/private content repository. Will this new tool be able to integrate with WebexSocial and what features does it have in addition to the features/capabilities provided by Webex Social?
I simply don’t understand Cisco’s long term strategy. On one side, you are silently laying off hundreds of workers, whereas on the other side you are acquiring talent via acquisitions + completely unrelated technologies. Additionally, there are much more interesting collaboration web startups – why collaborate.com? What’s going on at the exec level? Can someone explain to me what is Cisco’s long-term strategy without using buzzwords like “seamless collaboration” or “internet of things” etc. etc.
– A concerned shareholder
P.S. If comment doesn’t get published, please send this to the CEO
We appreciate your passion regarding our company strategy and how it all ties together. Collaboration is one of Cisco’s top priorities and continues to be an area of strategic focus for our customers and for Cisco. Cisco’s vision is to change the way we work, live, play, and learn. Collaboration technologies directly affect all of those areas and help Cisco deliver against its vision. Why Collaborate.com? Collaborate has unique collaboration technology and a strong team of engineers with deep cloud, mobile, and web expertise that will help accelerate Cisco’s innovation in collaboration.
As part of our build, buy, partner strategy, our acquisitions have allowed us to enter into new markets that have been critical to our success. In Q4FY13 during our earnings call we were transparent about our need to rebalance our portfolio to align with future growth areas. Given the level of talent and capabilities that Collaborate offers, we feel this was a valuable acquisition for top talent to help bolster our collaboration strategy.
I think they acquired the company just for the URL. I don’t see any strategic benefit.
Received this email:
Collaborate will be retired.
Collaborate for iPhone, Android, and Web will no longer be available for use as of March 1, 2014.
Collaborate servers will be turned off as of February 28, 2014 at midnight EST.
All content remaining in Collaborate as of March 1, 2014 will be deleted.
Obvious URL grab, possible talent grab, but it is not a technology acquisition and will never be incorporated into Cisco products.
As a shareholder I wish Cisco would be more upfront and honest about its intentions with this acquisition.
Thanks for your comment, Jonas. Collaborate has unique collaboration technology and a strong team of engineers with deep cloud, mobile and web expertise that will help accelerate Cisco’s innovation in collaboration. I assure you that the Collaborate technology will be integrated into Cisco’s collaboration platforms over the coming months. In fact, all Collaborate employees are now part of the Collaboration team working side by side. We are very excited to combine Collaborate’s team and technology with Cisco’s current offerings to improve team productivity and collaboration in the workplace.
Like their approach of content agregation and user centricity as well as their attitude of 3rd party integration. This is a real benefit.
Looking at a webpage you cannot read the architecture. It is like looking into a christal globe.
From my point of view personal concerns should be raised on Cisco´s a internal plattform.
When can we start using it?
Great!
This will help enterprise organizations adapt to the Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) era by making it easier for people to access and share their business files from their phones. plus, it aims to make its tools as user-friendly as possible.
May extend WebEx a bit, but I am holding my opinion on security, privacy, etc. Am not sure how scalable it is. Possibly, they have some patents we are interested in.
Will be interesting to see how this acquisition works out.
Does this have any bearing on our current testing of the Box application?
Hi Ian, thanks for your comment. No, the Collaborate.com acquisition is not expected to have an impact on any of our current or potential future relationships with third party providers, including Box. With that said, we plan to integrate technology from the Collaborate.com solution into future Cisco products.
Hello
Seek funds-JV’s partners for secure ROI ventures.
know anyone? -referral fee given
Plse advise
Best Regards
Lois
How does one contact via email Cisco’s corpoeate responsible for new ventures JV-investments?
Best R
Lois
As a shareholder I wish Cisco would be more upfront and honest about its intentions with this acquisition.