Cisco

Cisco funnels cash to Melbourne firm

U.S. networking giant Cisco Systems has invested an unknown amount into Melbourne-based Majitek, an Australian firm primarily created by the founding members of Sausage Software, an early Australian dot-com success.

The company, which specializes in cloud computing and service-oriented architecture solutions, announced Monday that Cisco had participated in a $7.5 million round of equity financing, along with existing investor Pierce & Pierce.

Majitek will use the funds to further enhance its products and also to expand its international operations; Majitek will open a permanent office in Dubai and will work with Cisco facilities in Bangalore. The news comes … Read more

Imagining tech's post-nuke winter? A preview

On a day after the stock market suffered through one of its classic fits of pique at the news du jour, it's hard to find any bright side to a 382-point loss. But something's happening here and--apologies to the immortal Buffalo Springfield--what's taking place is becoming increasingly clear.

The conventional wisdom is that these are (among) the worst of times, with the tech economy hostage to the vagaries of the larger global economy. I suppose that it's reasonable to expect things to get a lot worse before they get any better. But how about some historical … Read more

Is Cisco fattening its wallet for acquisitions?

Technology giant Cisco Systems said Monday it plans to sell $4 billion in bonds to pad its corporate wallet with cash, spurring speculation that the company is on the hunt for companies to buy. But exactly which companies it might target and how much it is willing to pay are still unknown.

Cisco has shared some general thoughts on how it plans to spend the extra cash. For one, it will use a portion of the funds to pay down its $500 million of floating rate debt that comes due this month, according to Terry Alberstein, a spokesman for Cisco.… Read more

Cisco: Making lemonade from economic lemons

Updated at 3:45 p.m. PST: Upated throughout with information from the company's conference call.

Cisco Systems' optimistic leader John Chambers noted during the company's conference call Wednesday that the economy has gone from bad to worse as sales are expected to slip as much as 20 percent in the next quarter. But he said that Cisco is well-positioned to emerge even stronger after the economic malaise.

Chambers noted that revenues for the company's third fiscal quarter, which ends in April, will be down 15 percent to 20 percent from the previous year. In dollars, this … Read more

Cisco to manage energy of tech gear and buildings

Cisco Systems on Tuesday introduced software for controlling energy use in networked computing equipment as well as building heating and cooling systems.

Called EnergyWise, the software is a free upgrade to Cisco Catalyst switches that can monitor and manage how energy is used on IP-connected devices, including phones and wireless routers. This summer Cisco will release a version, based on Verdiem's Surveyor PC management software, that reduces energy levels of PCs.

With EnergyWise, a company can set policies on energy use, allowing PCs or networking equipment to go into sleep mode after work hours, for example.

Cisco's longer-term … Read more

Point (Cisco), counterpoint (HP)

Recently the tech industry has been all a buzz about Cisco entering the server market. What would this mean to Cisco's relationship with large server vendors?

It didn't take long to get an answer. Monday, Hewlett-Packard took another step toward enterprise networking when it announced a new family of data center switches and a new alliance program called the ProCurve Open Network Ecosystem (ONE) with partners like Avaya, F5 Networks, McAfee, and Riverbed. This activity follows HP's wireless acquisition (Colubris) and its reorganization to place ProCurve within its Technology Solutions Group of other enterprise products.

Yeah I … Read more

IP networks will feel traffic pain in 2009

Many are concerned about cell phone networks getting overwhelmed on Tuesday during the U.S. presidential inauguration.

Cell phone networks are built to be oversubscribed, using statistical analysis to bet against a certain of users flooding a network all at the same time. While it's never been a fool-proof strategy, it's worked reasonably well until recently when smartphones and bandwidth-intensive applications have moved to mobile devices.

But cell networks aren't the only networks starting to get overwhelmed. Cisco Systems says that in 2012, Internet video traffic alone will be 400 times the traffic carried by the U.S. Internet backbone in 2000. Video-on-demand, IPTV, peer-to-peer video, and Internet video are forecast to account for nearly 90 percent of all consumer IP traffic in 2012.

"Cisco VNI projections indicate that IP traffic will increase at a combined annual growth rate (CAGR) of 46 percent from 2007 to 2012, nearly doubling every two years. This will result in an annual bandwidth demand on the world's IP networks of approximately 522 exabytes2, or more than half a zettabyte."

With this and the continued growth of converged networks within enterprise environments, the thought of the simple data network is no more. Networks have become highly complex and distributed, tasking companies with the need to scale to monitor and analyze all aspects of the voice, video and IPTV.

The network that has become overwhelmed in 2008 will become incredibly burdened in 2009 and beyond if companies do not manage their bandwidth.… Read more

Tech giants team on education push

Microsoft, Intel, and Cisco plan to announce Tuesday that they are working together to help ensure that proper standards are created for measuring digital literacy.

The three companies aren't coming up with the assessment criteria themselves, but rather bringing together a group of education leaders and academics to identify the characteristics that should form the basis of global standards.

While such standards have emerged for math and science, they are also needed for other kinds of 21st century skills, Microsoft Vice President Anoop Gupta said in an interview last week.

To head the effort, the troika has tapped professor … Read more

Execs see technology as economic equalizer

LAS VEGAS--Two of the tech industries biggest champions for using technology to eliminate poverty in the developing world took the stage at the Consumer Electronics Show here on Friday for the final keynotes of the conference.

The message that the executives brought to the crowd at CES was simple: Technology is key to improving the lives of billions of poor people throughout the world. Intel Chairman Craig Barrett and Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers have each received awards and have been lauded for their work in helping fight poverty throughout the world.

Barrett took the stage first, where he promoted … Read more