"Being a major infrastructure vendor, Cisco has a potential advantage for tighter integration of unified communications and collaboration tools with the network itself, something Microsoft does not have and something Nortel could develop were it to focus on uniting its hardware and software development resources internally," Silva said.
Ned Hooper, Cisco vice president of corporate business development, won't deny this notion. "We see the network, and the build-out of the network as a platform, certainly as a competitive advantage that Cisco possesses."
- with Network World staff