Networking giant Cisco on Friday said it agreed to acquire Jabber, a messaging software firm, to enhance its collaboration efforts in enterprise networks.

The purchase of Denver, Colorado-based Jabber will be Cisco’s sixteenth acquisition in less than two years and its twelfth of a software and services firm. 

Cisco, which was one of the pioneers of network routing, has sought to adapt to the changing communications landscape by buying promising software firms and embedding their technology into  its hardware and middleware.

In many cases Cisco invests in the startups and partners with them to measure the technology fit. In Jabber’s case, Cisco said it was integrating Jabber’s technology into its unified messaging product back inJanuary 2007.

“We are focused on being the industry collaboration leader, and Jabber along with come of other acquisitions like WebEx fits into that goal,” said Charles Carmel, Cisco’s vice president of corporatedevelopment.

In 2000 Jabber began developing its IM technology as an open-source project with a worldwide community contributing plenty of free software for multiple client devices and servers.

The technology has evolved over the years as a multimedia, presence-based communications platform and is part of the underpinnings of Google Talk and iChat, the IM client in Mac OS X.

Cisco did not disclose the financial details of its acquisition of Jabber, which is backed by Intel Capital, France Telecom, and Jona.