Cisco Sends A Recall On Its Cloud Email Strategy | Forrester Blogs

An excerpt from a Forrester review of Cisco’s retreat from enterprise messaging

So what happened and what does it mean for I&O professionals? Here’s our take:

• Cisco underestimated the barriers to entering this market. Cisco ran into the ring where there was a Battle Royale being fought between IBM, Google, and the heavyweight Microsoft. My colleague, Ted Schadler, and I have spent a lot of time over the last few years focusing on the impact of the cloud on email and collaboration means for C&C pros charged with creating the information workplace vision, and the I&O pros responsible for running it– and we knew they were in for a tough fight. Cisco’s initial focus was on the SME market where Microsoft has enjoyed significant success and Google was another popular choice. Many customers have existing vendor relationships where there were technical dependencies among collaboration products and pricing incentives to bundle products together – and this made it an extraordinarily steep hill to climb for a newer player in the market. Even having the capability to integrate with Microsoft Outlook to deliver an “Exchange-like” experience couldn’t help overcome that challenge.

Cisco Sends A Recall On Its Cloud Email Strategy | Forrester Blogs