Orative

You know when you have a really great idea and then someone comes and invents it at about the same time? Well thats the story with Orative. (www.Orative.com)

Earlier this year I was working on a project with Savaje and their all Java mobile phone operating system.

I was thinking wouldn't it be cool to have an application running on this mobile phone that could tell whether people in the office were on the phone/off the phone or logged off by using SIP presence status.

This would only be possible with companies running IP handsets like Polycom and Cisco but these are the defacto standard these days so within 3-5 years will be everywhere.

Well Orative came out with an application that did just that but it only works on the Symbian mobile platform (I guess they had to start somewhere - I'm sure they have a palm and windows mobile 5 coming soon).

Anyway well Cisco bought Orative today.

http://www.theregister.com/2006/10/26/cisco_buys_orative/
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/102606-cisco-orative.html

I'm not sure they couldn't have developed it in house for cheaper but I guess it's the old "Buy instead of Build" strategy.

Lol I love the comment at The Register saying 33 people $31 Million dollars and sobering up, considering it was only a few months from start to sale they should be.

My one concern about this is that Orative will now be "Borgatised" into Cisco and pop out the other end no longer supporting all SIP handsets but only supporting the Cisco proprietary standard MGCP (watch out Polycom - this is aimed at you) but I guess we'll see.

Eitherway good luck to the guys.


Cheers,
Dean