Cisco agreed to acquire PostPath, a start-up based in Mountain View, California with additional development operations in Sofia, Bulgaria, for its email and calendaring software. Cisco will pay approximately $215 million in exchange for all shares of PostPath.
PostPath offers an enterprise email and collaboration server that is a drop-in alternative to Microsoft Exchange. The platform features support for Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES), Microsoft ActiveSync email push technologies, iPhone 3G and iPhone 2.0 software. 
With the PostPath Server, enterprise customers -- including iPhone users -- have access to full-feature, enterprise-grade messaging and collaboration at a significantly lower cost than Microsoft Exchange. Organizations can take advantage of the operational efficiency and cost savings of the PostPath server to roll out large mailboxes and mobile messaging to their users much easier and cheaper than with Exchange 2007.
Cisco said it will leverage PostPath to enhance the existing email and calendaring capabilities of its WebEx Connect collaboration platform. . Specifically, Cisco plans to extend the e-mail and calendar functionality of its flexible software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based collaborative platform that includes instant messaging, voice, video, data, document management and Web 2.0 applications.
Upon completion of the acquisition, PostPath employees will become part of the Cisco Collaboration Software Group (CSG). CSG is part of the recently established Software Group, consisting of Cisco's major software businesses; including the IOS network operating system, network and service management, Unified Communications solutions, policy management, and SaaS offerings.http://www.cisco.comhttp://www.postpath.com
- PostPath is headed by Duncan Greatwood, who previously held executive positions at Virata/GlobespanVirata/Conexant. Before that he held a variety of engineering and product marketing positions at Madge Networks.
