Cisco vs Microsoft

Over at SeekingAlpha.com, Kris Tuttle provides some interesting details regarding Cisco's purchase of WebEx. He says that

"WebEx has a network of 3000 servers and over 2M subscribers who use their technology as an on-demand platform for collaboration. Cisco sees that unified collaboration and communication are growing fast and particularly important in the SMB market when it can be offered in a SaaS format" and also "Because WebEx has established distribution channels, partners and a strong business model, it will be run as a stand-alone business and integrated into Cisco operations over time. This is said to represent a “new model” for Cisco. It seems similar to the VMWare structure at EMC for now."

The questions raised are:

1. "If more and more people are going to use an expanded WebEx/Cisco platform to collaborate does it mean for the usage of Microsoft Office products?
2. Does this move by Cisco put more pressure on Google to add communication collaboration to their Docs and Spreadsheets platform?"

I had never thought of Cisco as a direct competitor to Microsoft before. Interesting...