Cisco Systems Inc. may not be the first name that comes to mind when thinking of enterprise collaboration software, but it’s starting to make big waves in the segment. The technology giant this morning launched a $150 million program designed to encourage the development of third party functionality for its Spark communications platform.

The move is seemingly a response to the $80 million fund that Slack Technologies Inc. announced three months ago as part of a similar ecosystem expansion effort. Both initiatives are based on the same basic model: Developers with something to contribute can apply for financing to implement their ideas and start acquiring customers. But whereas the startup is focusing mainly on fostering the creation of small bots capable of automating tasks like booking an Uber ride through its service, Cisco has much broader ambitions in mind.

The company is looking to achieve the same goal that IBM Corp. is pursuing with Watson over in the analytics market and have software vendors incorporate the capabilities of Spark into their applications. Such integration is facilitated through a programming interface that was launched around the same time that Slack announced its competing fund and has already attracted more than 10,000 developers since, according to Cisco. The new $150 million fund should help increase that number considerably over the next few quarters.

But no matter how much third party functionality will be produced by its partners as part of the initiative, the vendor still needs to do its part if it wants to set Spark apart from the pack. One way Cisco plans to enhance its service is by adding bots similar to those in Slack that will provide the ability to access information from other systems through the collaboration platform. Although there’s no official word about other functionality, it’s likely that more sophisticated additions are in the pipe as well. And the company might eventually even provide developers with the ability to build their own custom bots as Slack does now. 

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