Cisco’s foray into email called Webex Email is a result of the integration of Postpath, a company Cisco acquired recently. The product supports the MAPI protocol, providing interoperability with Microsoft Outlook. This is a smart move by Cisco, allowing customers to swap out Exchange servers on the back-end, yet avoiding expensive client upgrades by keeping Outlook on the front-end. Webex Email is available immediately to customers in the U.S. and Canada with support for mailboxes of up to 25GB. No information on pricing yet.

On the social software front, Cisco’s new offering goes head-to-head with IBM’s Lotus Connections, which combines user profiles, social bookmarking, wiki’s and blogs in an attempt to bring web 2.0 technology into the enterprise. Further evidence that Cisco is following the web 2.0 playbook is Show and Share, a video sharing service, and Pulse a social media content search tool.

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