Cisco gets into the social network business with Quad
Does the world really need another business social network? Apparently Cisco thinks so, because it plans to release one later this year. The company has been revealing more details of the new product, called Quad …
Context & Ripple Effects
Quad is the productization of an argument Cisco has been making since at least December 2007, when its social networking strategy came into focus — and that GigaOM dismissed back in March 2007 as a wrong bet. What was then positioning is now a shipping plan for later this year.
The move sits inside a deliberate expansion beyond routers and switches: Cisco pushed into servers last spring, then in November 2009 announced collaboration software spanning IM, e-mail and social networking explicitly aimed at Microsoft and IBM (Cisco Software Takes On Microsoft, IBM). CEO John Chambers had already drawn the boundary of that ambition in December 2009, denying any interest in smartphones while confirming Cisco would rather build the network supporting RIM, Apple and Palm handsets than sell its own.
First-order effects
- Enterprise buyers evaluating Microsoft SharePoint and IBM's collaboration stack gain a third option pitched as native to the network they already run from Cisco.
- Quad forces Cisco to staff and sustain a software business with usage-based adoption dynamics — a different operating rhythm than its equipment sales cycle.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft and IBM must defend the collaboration suite market against a vendor that can bundle Quad with switching, server and infrastructure contracts, shifting competition toward package deals.
- Cisco's own portfolio logic tightens: each new software line (servers, collaboration, now social networking) raises the stakes on cross-product integration, pressuring rivals who sell those layers separately.
Third-order effects
- If Quad finds traction, it strengthens the case that network owners can recompose their moat by layering applications on top of the pipes — validating the direction skeptics rejected in 2007; if it stalls, the 2007 'wrong bet' critique hardens into the standard caution against infrastructure vendors chasing application markets.
The trend: Infrastructure vendors are diversifying upward into application software and devices, with Cisco's Quad testing whether a network incumbent can win users in markets owned by software-first rivals.