Cisco this morning said it intends to purchase LineSider Technologies, a privately-held network management software based out of Danvers, Massachusetts. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed, and Cisco said it aims to complete the acquisition in the second quarter of its fiscal year 2011.
LineSider markets software that enables companies to build network services and securely create and deploy cloud computing infrastructure. Cisco says LineSider will enhance its ability to rapidly provision network services to its clients. → Read More
I know we’re not technically in a recession and Americans love their electronics— especially those that start with the letter “i”— but as a whole, electronic retailers need a reality check, or a swift kick to the gut.
On Wednesday, CrunchGear’s Devin Coldewey and I dropped by two product announcements, one for Cisco’s purportedly consumer-friendly ūmi and Logitech’s Google TV accessory round-up. It was a long parade of flashy products with decent specs and thought-provoking price tags. As I mentioned in an earlier post, ūmi truly does bring high-quality telepresence into the home (assuming you have a solid connection) but it will cost you $599.99 for the hardware and $25 a month just to use the service.
When I asked Logitech’s CEO, Jerry Quindlen, what he thought about Cisco’s ūmi price point for TC TV, the polite executive merely said, “I don’t think anything that’s too expensive or isn’t easy to use is going to be successful, doesn’t matter who it’s from…if that’s where it [ūmi] is…that might be a tough sell in this economy.”
Why does the phrase: “pot calling the kettle black” come to mind? Video with Logitech’s CEO ahead. → Read More
After a 15-minute private demo of Cisco’s Umi, the company’s latest video calling system, I was fairly impressed with the unit’s sharp 1080p HD resolution and the natural feel of the audio (which is apparently designed to elevate human voices and suppress background noise). Then again, that level of quality is no real surprise given Cisco’s history in telepresence technology and their popularity on the enterprise side.
However, the main problem with Cisco is not innovation, it’s getting outside of the boardroom and finding a real place in the consumer’s living room— and no where is that gap more apparent than in Umi’s sticker price. As CrunchGear reporter Devin Coldewey lamented, it’s a consumer-facing device priced for the office at $599 for the system and $24.99 a month.
After the presentation, TC TV got a chance to catch up with Marthin De Beer, Cisco’s SVP of the Emerging Technologies Group, and asked him to justify Umi’s price. See parts of our demo and the interview with De Beer ahead. → Read More
The rumors were true: Cisco has announced a new video calling system called ūmi (pronounced yoo-mee), which allows for easy 1080p video calling between your TV and any other ūmi system or Google Video Chat. Sounds great, although the $599 price, plus $24.99 per month for access to the service, may severely limit the uptake of this otherwise impressive piece of kit. → Read More
Well, that was quick. With the news this morning that Tony Bates, a senior VP at Cisco who runs its Enterprise Group is exiting the company to become CEO of Skype, Cisco is announcing that CTO Padmasree Warrior is taking on Bates’ old role (and will also remain as CTO).
Warrior will officially become SVP/GM of Cisco’s Enterprise, Commercial and Small Business Development Group. As Cisco’s communications director John Earnhardt writes in a blog post, enterprise is “the heart of Cisco’s business and we are fortunate to have the talent of an (ahem) warrior take over this industry leading team of over 10,000 world-class engineering talent.” → Read More
Skype is taking another step towards becoming a public company today with the appointment of a new CEO. Update: I have confirmed that Skype’s new CEO is going to be Tony Bates, a senior VP at Cisco, who runs its Enterprise and Service Provider groups, which together account for about $30 billion worth of Cisco’s business. Bates will be moving to Skype HQ in Luxembourg and will begin his duties at the end of October. CFO Adrian Dillion will be acting CEO in the interim. Since it’s spin-off from eBay, Skype has a completely new executive team, including a new CFO, general counsel, chief marketing officer, and head of engineering. Now Bates will top off the new team.
Skype recently filed to go public in August. And while there were rumors that a company like Cisco might buy it, adding a new CEO at this time points more strongly in the direction of an IPO. → Read More
WAZZZUP! We are totally raging this weekend. We are going to Sharkey’s first and then Paul is having a hot tub party with you know who. Yeah! Her and like fifty of her friends! Broseph! I know! Aw man, I went totally speed skating yesterday. Yeah, dude, I wear a unitard and get up to like 40 miles an hour. Naw, I’m in training for the championships in Hawaii. Naw. That’s just something I do. I’m totally in it to win it. What? This thing? Duuuuuude. This is the new Jawbone thing from Cisco. Like it’s totally connected to the phone system. Oh man. Someone’s calling. → Read More
Cisco this morning announced its intent to acquire privately-held Arch Rock, which specializes in IP-based wireless sensor network technology with a focus on energy and environmental monitoring and Smart Grid applications.
Financial terms of the transaction are not being disclosed. → Read More
Cisco has made an offer to acquire Skype before they complete their IPO process, says one of our more reliable sources. We have not been able to confirm this rumor one way or another via other sources, which isn’t surprising. A company in lock down during the IPO process is usually even more tight lipped than normal.
But if true this would be one very big acquisition. Skype insiders are hoping for an out of the gate valuation of $5 billion or so, we’ve heard. Presumably Cisco would have to bidding in that range to make it interesting.
Google was also rumored to be sniffing around Skype, but antitrust concerns may have persuaded them not to make an actual offer. → Read More
Cisco this morning announced its intent to purchase privately-held and venture-backed ExtendMedia, a provider of software-based Content Management Systems that helps media companies and network operators manage digital video content.
Financial terms of the transaction remain undisclosed, and the deal is expected to close in the first half of Cisco’s fiscal year 2011. → Read More
Networking equipment maker Cisco intends to build a sustainable city in Portugal. The company will work with Living PlanIT, a startup focused on developing large-scale sustainable technologies.
What will this city look like? For one thing, it’ll be wired with tens of millions of sensors providing real-time data to help manage common urban issues like traffic and crime. The 11-square-mile city will host 225,000 residents at a site in Paredes near the less sustainable city of Porto. → Read More
Cisco is launching a new Hosted Collaboration platform today, which allows partners to provide a wide range of Cisco collaboration applications, such as WebEx, an enterprise focused messaging platform, a contact center and more, to their customers via the cloud.
The Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution gives customers the ability to deploy multiple collaboration applications on one server in a virtualized environment and then host those applications for multiple client organizations. → Read More
Cisco is in the business of sending bits from one place to the next. Therefore, anything that will allow them to play to their strengths, namely data access, is important. That’s why they bought Flip and that’s why they just announced this odd business tablet.
It’s basically an HD tablet running Android with full video conferencing and email and media access. Obviously there’s no price and they’ll be shipping in 2011, if they ever ship.
This is definitely not a consumer-facing product. It will be part of their Communications package that they sell to business users. My thinking is this won’t ship at all, but that’s just a hunch. Perhaps they’ll farm out the manufacture to an OEM for mass production, but don’t expect it in your local Best Buy. → Read More
This is nothing that a fat cheque won’t solve, but Apple has changed the name of iPhone OS to iOS. IOS is a named owned by Cisco Systems. You’ll recall that the name iPhone was also owned by Cisco. Is Apple so wealthy that it can go around taking trademarked name, paying the owners for the rights, or is the person in charge of coming up with names just a silly goose? Probably the former: Apple has money to buy whatever it wants these days. → Read More
Cisco is to buy privately held CoreOptics, a designer of digital signal processing solutions for high-speed optical networking applications.
Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay approximately $99 million in cash and retention-based incentives in exchange for all shares of CoreOptics.
The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in the second half of calendar year 2010. → Read More
Cisco today announced two new lines of wireless routers: the Valet series and the Linksys E-series. Both share the same design, with the only obvious differentiator being the color. The white Valet routers target the general consumer, while the black E-series is designed for “tech enthusiasts” like yours truly. → Read More
The European Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice have just approved Cisco’s $3.4 billion acquisition of video conferencing company Tandberg. According to the release, the transaction remains subject to review in Brazil; however, the antitrust approvals from the European Commission and Justice Department represent the final regulatory approvals required before the transaction can close. The deal, which was announced last Fall, is expected to close in the coming weeks.
Cisco and the Norway and New York-based Tandberg both develop competing tele- conferencing technologies. The release says that the European Commission took into account Cisco’s ambitions to incorporate Tandberg’s technologies to further “interoperability between its multi-screen video conferencing products and competitive products.” As a condition of the approval of the deal, Cisco is required to appoint an independent monitor, who must be approved by the Commission, to oversee the implementation of these commitments. Once the Commission approves the independent monitor, the deal can close. → Read More
When I came to the U.S. in 1980, I was young and naïve. I used to think that corruption and ethical lapses were just a third-world ill. Eventually, I became a tech CEO and learned the harsh realities of American business. Yes, standards are much higher, and breaches are punished, but the temptations are just the same here as they are in any other country. Ethical lapses (which are a form of corruption) are quite common. You watch stories about these on TV every other day and read about them on TechCrunch. It was the ethical lapses of our financial institutions that threw our economy into a tailspin, and for which we are paying the price, after all.
It is best to be aware of the temptations and to prevent the lapses from occurring. As Enron, Bernie Madoff, and Lehman Brothers have shown, it’s a slippery slope. Once you start compromising your values for short-term gains, there is no turning back. Business ethics are not something you need to start worrying about when your company reaches a certain size; they need to be sewn into the fabric of your startup from the get-go. The lessons are the same for tech businesses as they are for investment banks and for third-world economies. → Read More
Sonos, the Santa Barbara, California based startup that develops of wireless multi-room music systems, is taking a new round of financing from London-based Index Ventures, we’ve heard from multiple sources. Partner Mike Volpi, a forcer Cisco exec who found himself in the middle of a huge drama last year around eBay’s Skype spinoff, will join the board of directors of Sonos.
Volpi will bring real expertise to the Sonos board. As recently as 2007 he ran an $11 billion routing and access products busines for Cisco. He clearly knows how to sell products at scale.
Sonos has been around since 2003 and has raised some $40 million from private angel investors and BV Capital. Until last year the company sold very high end music products that users loved passionately, but the mutli-thousand dollar price point for a complete system made mainstream penetration difficult. → Read More
Keeping tabs on the performance of an SMB’s network is a necessary, and often laborious, task. System admins need to be able to know if and where problems are occurring on their network. Network monitoring tools are useful because they can alert a user when a pipe is clogged; however, receiving an alert will not help a system admin identify the source of the clog. Packet analyzers solve this problem when used for specific links, but deploying and monitoring them throughout an entire network would exceed most SMB’s resources given the overhead. As a result, many companies are turning to flow analyzers, which capture and process data from flow technologies, such as Cisco’s NetFlow and sFlow, to monitor their network.
Plixer International, a company devoted to measuring network performance, is deploying significant updates to its SaaS flow analysis tool, Scrutinizer. The updates are designed to save system administrators time by creating a new reporting tool, the matrix, as well as by correlating data across the routers and switches; instead of simply giving views from individual routers. Additionally, the updates will provide statistics from Cisco ASA firewalls and have full support for NBAR definitions. → Read More
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