Cisco planning to buy Jabber

A deal is in the works for Cisco to purchase the instant messaging platform vendor Jabber, a Denver-based company that has developed a "carrier class" platform based on open standards that can work across multiple messaging systems. These include AOL Instant Messenger, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger and Office Communication Server.

The move that could heighten Cisco's battle with Microsoft over the collaboration and office communications market. Cisco senior vice president Doug Dennerline said the company intends to use the technology to become "the interoperability benchmark in the collaboration space." Just a few weeks ago, Cisco laid down another challenge to Microsoft by announcing plans to buy PostPath, maker of email and calendaring software.

For more on Cisco's plans:
- check out this TechWorld.com article