I know that the rumors had been floating around for a while, but now the news is out. Cisco is purchasing the privately held Postpath for $215 million dollars. This is really interesting to me in that I've been working with Postpath for a short while and I'm really wondering about the value that Cisco is going to pull out of this deal. For starters, in this article, it's mentioned that Postpath:
"...provides a browser-independent AJAX Web client."
The reason I have a problem with that line is that the Postpath client is actually Zimbra's client.
I'm sure technical blogs are popping up all over the place talking about the things that Postpath can and can't do, but having installed it a couple of times and poked around inside, it seems like there is going to be a battle over some of the features. For example:
- ActiveSync - Postpath reverse-engineered ActiveSync rather than licensing it (say, like Apple), and I'm not sure how Microsoft will react to a large company like Cisco selling reverse-engineered technology.
- Exchange compatibility - I know that Postpath advertises that it integrates well with Exchange 2003 (and can exist in that environment), but how does it work with Exchange 2007, where there are significant changes to the architecture.
- Price comparison - When I looked at Postpath the cost comparison felt a little bit shady, but I don't want to sink into a full teardown. The main point is that they make some pretty grand claims about the savings that they can provide a company.
I really don't want to turn this into a Postpath bashing blog post, but I really don't see why so many people think that this will allow Cisco to become a major player in the messaging marketplace. If they were purchasing something like Zimbra, then I would give credence to the idea that they were looking to field a product that would really be commercially viable.
Having installed and used at least 5 messaging platforms in the past year, I kind of have to wonder about Cisco's choice. At least it wasn't Lotus...