Cisco announced the acquisition of Versly:

“Cisco today announced that it has acquired privately-held Versly. Based in San Francisco, Versly integrates collaboration capabilities via a plug-in into Microsoft Office applications, simplifying the way people work by enabling more effective collaboration around content in documents, spreadsheets, presentations and email.

“Collaboration is a top priority at Cisco. With this acquisition we’re enhancing our collaboration offerings and improving the user experience by integrating social technologies within the business applications individuals and teams use at work,” said Murali Sitaram, vice president and general manager, Collaboration Software Group (CSG), Cisco. “Furthermore, the integration with Versly will drive productivity improvements for organizations and their knowledge workers, many of whom are among the 600 million Microsoft Office users.”“

My Comments
1. Versly was a new entrant vendor that made a connector for collaboration systems to integrate with Microsoft Office applications. Such a connection is a big selling point for Microsoft SharePoint, and Google acquired a similar company to enable integration from Google Apps with Microsoft Office. Making the use of collaboration tools a part of the user’s daily workflow, and delivering seamless integration with the tools they use, is an important part of the adoption process.

2. There were some neat features in Versly for integrating the conversation about the document with the document itself, and for supporting co-authoring.

3. Expect to see this integrated with Cisco Quad in the months ahead.