The answer to that question, in a sense, is: It doesn't matter. The reason is that Google clearly sees multiple markets, all blended together, where consumers are also workers. Consider this: If a Google Voice service, to link all your phones to one number with a variety of add-ons such as turning voice mail into text, can be offered to millions of users for free, isn't it likely to also be used by workers? Small businesses could use it and not care if Google is using some of the to sell to advertisers.

Large businesses might never want a Google Voice or Wave feature used by their workers, but who would stop anyone from doing so, and how? It's the same concern that was raised two years ago with the first-generaton iPhone, which was so attractive to some users that they ignored security warnings from their IT shops.

Today, Cisco's Warrior said that it will make virtual voice service available, too, probably through its service provider customers. That could be interpreted as Cisco's most direct response to Google Voice, even if Cisco officials won't admit it directly. That's because nearly every major wireless or wired service provider sells to both large companies and consumers, and no service provider is going to want a Google cloud computing service like Google Voice to come along for free and take away paying customers.

So, Cisco's virtual voice in the cloud could give a service provider the ability to tell its own customers, "See, we have our own version of Google Voice, but you can offer it to your customers, complete with Cisco security and no worries about their loss of privacy."

Kerravala has no doubt that virtual voice from Cisco will compete with Google Voice. "Oh, yeah, its gotta be competitive," he said. "Google Voice is really just cloud-based voice, so that's very competitive with Cisco's telco clients."