Cisco has signed a definitive agreement to buy PostPath, Inc., (DEMOfall 06) a maker of e-mail and calendaring software, for $215 million and plans to add those capabilities to its on-demand WebEx Connect collaboration platform. The deal is expected to close in October.
PostPath of Mountain View, CA. makes PostPath Server, a Linux-based e-mail and collaboration server the company touts as a replacement or supplement to Microsoft Exchange. An archiving edition of the software is available to store e-mails in a less cumbersome fashion than Exchange does with its journaling of old e-mails. The company also offers a version of PostPath Server for VMware.
Cisco plans to put the server in the cloud and sell an e-mail and calendaring service to its customers. "Our 'cloud-based' delivery model offers our customers rapid deployment and compelling economics," Doug Dennerline, senior vice president of Cisco's Collaboration Software Group (CSG), said in a statement.
PostPath requires no middleware to interoperate with Microsoft Outlook, Exchange, Active Directory, ActiveSynch. and BlackBerry Enterprise Server, among other applications. But it also promotes itself as a Linux-based replacement for Exchange that gets around some of the Microsoft platform's shortcomings, including larger data stores and higher performance in terms of how many hits per minute the platforms can handle.
Yahoo! bought PostPath's direct competitor - startup Zimbra - for $350 million last year.
Cisco bought WebEx last year to deliver software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings, including instant messaging, team spaces for collaboration, wikis, and document sharing.
PostPath's 67 employees, including PostPath's development operations in Sofia, Bulgaria, will join Cisco's Collaboration Software Group. CSG is part of Cisco's recently established Software Group that oversees the IOS network operating system, network and service management, unified communications, policy management and SaaS offerings.
The company, which started in 2003 and is headed by CEO Duncan Greatwood, closed a $17.25 million Series C funding round in January 2007, bringing its total VC funding to $30 million. The third funding round was led by JAFCO Ventures; existing investors Matrix Partners and Worldview Technology partners also participated.
