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Über technologist Michael Hickens writes about the recent Cisco announcement that they intend on competing with Google, Zoho and MOSS in the cloud collaboration space. I left a lengthy comment on this page, trying to come to grips with the meaning of this challenge. I titled my comment, "Cisco Office? Maybe they should consider Feng Office-in-the-Cloud". Good luck Conrado. Go get them. Interestingly, Jason Harrop and i met Ms. Alex Hadden-Boyd, director of marketing for the collaboration software group at Cisco. She was kind enough to refer me directly to David Knight, the technology director of Cisco's WebEX Conferencing initiative. Alex is quoted in a CNet article at: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10276549-92.html Cisco is striving to redefine itself as a vendor connecting inner and outer clouds, thus reasserting its relevance in the context of a fluid Web-driven IT world increasingly dominated by the likes of Google, Salesforce, Oracle and IBM. It also hopes to parlay its legacy of infrastructure expertise into a reassuring presence, particularly for veteran IT administrators struggling to balance their in-house infrastructures against the cost-savings and potential efficiencies of cloud computing.

Nice catch and cast from Michael Hickens. He walks us through some strange goings on at SalesForce.com. It seems Commander Benioff has ordered the good ship SlaesForce to turn on a dime, drop everything, and set a course for Wave. Good stuff: "...... Could Salesforce be reengineering its AppExchange platform to run standards-based code like HTML 5? The reason I ask is that none other than Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff listed his status on Facebook this weekend as: "working on salesforce.com's new architecture." There would have to be a very good reason, or a transformational event like Google's introduction of its Wave, for the company to change a key element of its strategy.

.... "I recently described how Google's Wave, a collaboration tool based on the new HTML 5 standard, demonstrated the potential for Web applications to unglue Microsoft's hold on customers. My post quoted Gary Edwards, the former president of the Open Document Foundation, a first-hand witness to the failed attempt by Massachusetts to dump Microsoft and as experienced a hand at Microsoft-tilting as anyone I know......"