Cisco Buys Messaging Company Jabber

Cisco has announced a deal to acquire messaging and "presence" company Jabber to beef up its Internet communication products.

Internet gear giant Cisco has announced a deal to acquire privately-held Internet messaging and “presence” company Jabber for an undisclosed amount. Based in Denver, Jabber develops and provides communication services, including instant messaging technology that’s interoperable between different platforms and applications and can, for instance, act as a gateway between normally isolated services like Google Talk, Microsoft’s Office Communication Service, IBM SameTime, and Yahoo Messenger.

“With the acquisition of Jabber, we will be able to extend the reach of our current instant messaging service and expand the capabilities of our collaboration platform,” said Cisco’s senior VP for collaboration software Doug Dennerline, in a statement. “Our intention is to be the interoperability benchmark in the collaboration space.”

The jabber acquisition is just the latest in Cisco’s moves to get into the software services market, particularly at the enterprise level. Other recent acquisitions include WebEx, IronPort, and PostPath.

Cisco expects the deal will close by January 2009.