Cisco is getting into the Web e-mail game with a $215 million purchase of five-year-old PostPath. PostWho? The company sells a Linux-based e-mail service to enterprises somewhat like Zimbra (which Yahoo bought for $350 million last year). PostPath is a fully functional in-browser Ajax client, and on the back-end it is trying to take on Microsoft Exchange.
The software also works on mobile phones, including the iPhone. Cisco will add PostPath’s functionality to its WebEx collaboration service (it bought WebEx for $3.2 billion last year).
Not a bad outcome for a company whose software development team is based in Bulgaria. PostPath previously raised a total of $30 million. Its most recent round was a $15 million series C in January, 2007. Investors included JAFCO Ventures, Matrix Partners and Worldview Technology Partners.
As software moves to the cloud, Cisco wants to capture some of the higher margins that go along with that, as opossed to simply pushing boxes that quickly decline in value. Many of us already rely exclusively on Web-based email, but corporations are only now making the shift.
PostPath is nothing like Zimbra actually. It’s much more of a technical threat to Microsoft than Zimbra ever will be.
PostPath reverse engineered the Microsoft Exchange RPC communication stack so that PostPath’s email server looks and acts like an Exchange server on the network. That’s impressive.
offtopic – new design guys?
It looks great! …and the problem with repositioning the scroll position as the plethora of TC ads piles onto the screen seems to be resolved.
Greed sets in! This design is SO optimized for ad revenue that I want to puke. Not only do I have to look at more ads on the main page, there’s also the “read entire post” link that takes me to a whole extra pageview for an additional paragraph of news. Hope you double your ad revenue!
What a great exit for this company. Congrats!
Raising $30M seems like a ton of cash for a company that has engineering based in Bulgaria. How much is a engineer going to cost you there $2K/month?
Any idea on revenue numbers?
$2K easily given the weak dollar. Highly competitive job market, too.
They have engineers in Mountain View. I interviewed there.
Once again, Cisco makes a sound investment in an email technology vendor. Just like it did with IronPort. Great choice.
Raj is right: architecturally not at all like Zimbra. More analysis at richijennings.com.
“As software moves to the cloud, Cisco wants to capture some of the higher margins that go along with that, as opossed to simply pushing boxes that quickly decline in value. Many of us already rely exclusively on Web-based email, but corporations are only now making the shift.”
Fluff.
postpath is not exactly “postwho” since it is the number of result when you search for “exchange alternative”.
although the money cisco has been willing to shell out, speaks for the strength of the software, it also speaks for the increasing clarity where the biggies will compete in the times to come – “complete collaboration solutions” or “unified communications” (not sure if the expression has been used in this context before) – integrated messaging + collaboration + conferencing solutions (mail, tasks, calendars, contact directories, document management, intranet/extranet publishing, forums, chat, web conferencing). The recent spate of releases points at this.
- google has been building its online suite with google pages, google apps etc
- microsoft stepped into the fray with its “hosted productivity suite”
- cisco also dives in!
players serving growing businesses are also going the same way. hyperoffice recently launched its web conferencing solution hypermeeting to add the missing piece to its suite already equipped with messaging and collaboration features. (i think their solution exceeds the biggies in many ways)
read my analysis here
oops – its the TOP result for the search string “exchange alternative”
really the WebEx division… I dont see the play right there… after all they did simply ‘rebrand’ the zimbra web front end they where a player in the replace exchange with a stable lower cost linux alternative so you did not have to pay microsoft exchange enterprise license fee
I dont see the stratergy in the webex corner of cisco land…
in the ironport corner of cisco land I really do see how they could make inroads
maybe they will just be assimilated by the borg and not seen again except in some high end cisco kit for talking to exchange…
regards
John Jones
http://www.johnjones.me.uk
John, the PostPath and Zimbra architectures are quite different. The Web UI is simply a distraction — the real value that PostPath offers to Cisco is the Exchange-replacement technology.
Did I mention there’s more analysis at richijennings.com?
saya mendapat kiriman email yang memberitahukan bahwa saya mendapat hadiah jutaan dolar dari webex cisco ! saya dikirimi form dan di perintahkan untuk mengisi form tersebut yang salah satunya mengenai nomor rekening dan alamat bank saya ! apakah hadiah ini benar dari webex cisco ?