9/2/2008 -- Call it a head-scratching whydunnit: Cisco Systems Inc. last week acquired PostPath, a provider of e-mail and calendaring software.

On its face, the PostPath buy looks like still another departure for Cisco, which -- with question-begging acquisitions like those of the former Scientific Atlanta or WebEx -- has sometimes ventured far afield from its networking niche.

But with Cisco gearing up to take on Microsoft in the unified communications and collaboration (UCC) segment, its decision to nab PostPath is far from question-begging. The way some industry watchers see it, it's the most logical thing in the world.

In most cases, when Cisco acquires a company, its reasoning is obvious. When Cisco acquired the former Cognio nearly a year ago, for example, it did so to both bolster its WLAN portfolio and to lock up a potential partner.

The Cognio acquisition also cemented a long-standing partnership (Cisco was a major reseller of Cognio's technology) and denied best-of-breed WLAN diagnostic technology to its competitors. Call it a win-win for Cisco.

PostPath's value-add is less obvious. Cisco, after all, doesn't have an e-mail or calendaring play. It does, however, have WebEx, and it's partially as a means to strengthen WebEx's collaborative capabilities -- particularly, natch, on the e-mail and calendaring tips -- that Cisco pulled the trigger on the PostPath purchase.

It isn't jus about WebEx, of course. Cisco, along with Microsoft, is vying for supremacy in the still-burgeoning UCC segment.

In this regard, PostPath's e-mail and calendaring assets lets Cisco flesh out a collaborative and communicative stack that currently consists of instant messaging (IM), voice, video, data, document management and Web 2.0 applications. That's how Cisco executives spin it, at any rate.

"The acquisition of PostPath complements our strategy to develop an integrated collaboration platform designed for how we work today and into the future, providing real productivity gains and a more satisfying user experience," said Doug Dennerline, senior vice president of Cisco's collaboration software group, in a statement. "Our 'cloud-based' delivery model offers our customers rapid deployment and compelling economics."

Market-watcher Gartner, for its part, thinks Cisco is gearing up to challenge Microsoft, which -- on the strength of its Exchange e-mail and collaboration platform -- has an UCC ace up its sleeve. "[N]o vendor can succeed in the UCC market without a strong e-mail presence. PostPath has a Linux-based e-mail system that it has marketed as a replacement for Exchange: It can work natively with Active Directory and supports the Outlook client," wrote Gartner's Matt Cain in a research bulletin. "PostPath's small size made larger companies hesitant to buy the e-mail system, a problem solved by Cisco's ownership. The Cisco/PostPath partnership will threaten the Exchange franchise."

Cain doesn't see PostPath as a slam dunk for Cisco, however. "No new e-mail vendor has successfully penetrated the commercial space in a decade. Cisco plans to attack the e-mail market via a change in the provisioning model from on-premises deployment to software as a service...just as Google is doing," he pointed out. "Cisco is moving into SaaS to maintain its high growth rate...but success requires a retrained sales force, new customer relationships, deep knowledge of cloud technology and billions of dollars in investment." --Stephen Swoyer