Cisco Needs to Buy Counterpath

With Logitech buying LifeSize today, that makes for a very interesting development in the war in the desktop video market.

Cisco owns the high end market with Telepresence. While one would say that HALO is a competitor, offered by H-P, it's really not, and HP has nothing below it, making them also an ideal buyer of Counterpath, as well as Vidyo. But HP doesn't work that way, and more and more is moving into the services, not apps as services world.

Logitech, also has SightSpeed, the entry level, but like Lifesize, a service based on SIP and H.264 so with today's acquisition, they are building up from the bottom, while Cisco is working from the top down.

Counterpath, to whom I've become an advisor, has the desktop/laptop clients that are already doing SIP standards based H.264 video and already integrate nicely with Cisco voice platforms.

While Skype is playing around with their video strategy, with the promise of multiparty video, their strength is HD right now, but they're not standards based. What's more, with On2 being bought by Google, this puts Skype at odds with them, as Google's purchase of Gizmo means they now also have a very useful video application inside an IM client that does presence. Guess what? So does Counterpath.

In my view this is a natural fit.

Comments

[twitter.com/ttrentler]

I'm finding Cisco's video strategy pretty interesting these days.
It looks to me like they trying to bring as much video as possible to the workplace. What better way to get people to upgrade their switches and routers?

On the high end they just announced their new super video phone, the 9971 for use with their Unified Communications Manager IP PBX. Built in wi-fi, gigabit switch ports, video camera, bluetooth and USB ports!? (here is a quick link to info on their new phones http://uc500.com/introducing-new-cisco-8961-and-9900-series-ip-phones-video )

On the low end they are testing the ability to monitor their new IP Video surveillance cameras from the SPA525G phone on the UC500 SMB platform. That platform has also been certified for use with Skype for SIP. Skype for SIP doesn't yet support video but I can't help but wonder what the future holds.