At the end of last week, Cisco announced its plans to acquire Jabber and its open source instant messaging technology in order to have a better chance at battling Microsoft in the communications market.

So far, the company did not disclose any details about the financial aspects of the deal which will probably be released once the deal is finalized, sometime in early 2009. Once the deal will be completed, all Jabber employees will become part of Cisco’s collaboration software group.

The plan is to use the technology for a better combination of e-mail, instant messaging and the rest of data communications. At this point, Microsoft holds the number one position in data communications and Cisco is the leader when it comes to real-time voice communications. The Jabber acquisition will significantly boost Cisco’s ability to interoperate with the rest of collaboration vendors and it will also extend the reach of its instant messaging and collaboration offer package.

"With the acquisition of Jabber, we will be able to extend the reach of our current instant messaging service and expand the capabilities of our collaboration platform," Doug Dennerline, senior VP for Cisco's Collaboration Software Group, said in a statement. "Our intention is to be the interoperability benchmark in the collaboration space." He also explained that enterprise organizations are looking for an extensible presence and messaging platform that can integrate business process applications and also adapt at any point to their changing needs.

More details about the acquisition are expected over the next few months.