Cisco :: VoIP Biz-News.com

Number of results 25 for Cisco

19/05/2012 - Cisco tops AlcaLu, Juniper amid robust U.S. provider spending

Wall Street may be hammering Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO)--the company's share price has stuttered since it released earnings results last week, closing Friday at $16.47, down from a high of $21.30 in recent months--but new data suggest Cisco may currently be the strongest performer in the service provider routers and carrier Ethernet space.

Synergy Research Group said Cisco, in the first quarter of 2012, was the only vendor to swim against a 6 percent drop in vendor revenues for service provider routers and carrier Ethernet. It showed a sequential gain of 2 percent.

Cisco also grabbed a bigger share of the market, closing the quarter with a 56 percent share, which was better than its 50 percent share average for all of 2011.

Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU), too, saw its revenues drop in the first quarter while adding market share. In Q1, the company held 17 percent of the market, maintaining its No. 2 ranking for the second straight quarter. Juniper Networks remained in the No. 3 spot.

"One positive indicator for Juniper was that sales did bounce back strongly in North America after a very soft fourth quarter," the market-intelligence firm Synergy said.

Cisco's share of the North America market is typically 10 percent ahead of its share of the APAC and EMEA markets. Strong spending in North America, therefore, helped it disproportionately when compared to its competition, Synergy said.

For Q1, North America represented 47 percent of the worldwide market, with Cisco grabbing 63 percent of those revenues.

"We are used to seeing seasonal fluctuation in the market but the swings in this quarter were particularly strong," said Synergy founder and Chief Analyst Jeremy Duke. "This was driven by significant Service Provider spending in the U.S., where networks are running hot."

For more:
- see this release

19/05/2012 - Cisco, Tata team for Russia's first public telepresence room

Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) teamed with Tata Communications (NYSE: TCL) and BizKomm, a Cisco registered partner in Russia, to launch the public telepresence room in Moscow's Monarch business center.

The room offers an immersive experience, using full-size high-definition images.

Tata Communications was tapped to offer channel provisioning and management of the service that can link with the Tata Communications Global Meeting Exchange, one of the world's largest telepresence networks. according to a report on TelecomTiger.

"Telepresence is a game changing technology for business. Russia has joined our global network, which is an important step forward in our video business strategy aimed at making the technology available to as many organizations as possible through our global telepresence network", Said Alexander Strakhov, regional sales director, Tata Communications, Russia, CIS, and Baltics.

The companies said they expect international companies, local companies with foreign partners and suppliers, and international recruiting agencies to be major users of the room.

For more:
- see the TelecomTiger article

17/05/2012 - Cisco study finds BYOD has 'quantifiable benefits'

Enterprise IT departments are finding that there may be more benefits than detriments to allowing employees to use their own mobile devices at work. A Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) study found "quantifiable benefits," as well as complexities associated with the "bring your own device" trend that has swept corporate America.

A whopping 95 percent of respondents to the Cisco IBSG Horizons Study said their organizations allowed employee-owned devices in the workplace, and 84 percent said they provided some level of support for the device.

The report also predicted that knowledge workers will own 3.3 connected devices-from laptops to tablets and smartphones--each by 2014, up from 2.8 in 2012.

The survey, which polled some 600 IT and business leaders, found pro-BYOD policies produced two major benefits, "improved employee productivity (more opportunities to collaborate) and greater job satisfaction."

Nevertheless, the trend can still be worrisome. IT departments are most concerned about security and privacy issues, and about the burden of supporting multiple mobile platforms.

From an employee standpoint, the survey suggests that workers want the flexibility to use their own applications at work for access to social networks, cloud-based email and instant messaging.

The report also said that Cisco workers spent an average of $600 out of pocket for devices that allowed them to improve their work experience.

For more:
- see this release

23/04/2012 - Verizon collaborates with Orange on another telepresence deal

Verizon (NYSE: VZ), which in March launched a new offering that will allow users to conduct secure, high-quality video meetings across private or public networks on a variety of previously incompatible video platforms, is partnering with Orange Business Services on a broad telepresence play.

The deal will allow Verizon Immersive Video Exchange customers to collaborate with Orange Telepresence Community users across Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) TelePresence endpoints. AT&T (NYSE: T) in February announced a similar deal with Orange.

The latest deal helps streamline the infrastructure between the two telcos, helping to create similar scheduling, support, security and encryption mechanisms.

"Orange is committed to implementing interexchange services to make it easier for our customers to communicate via telepresence, regardless of network or exchange," said Andrew McFadzen, head of International Network Solutions at Orange Business Services. "This agreement expands the telepresence ecosystem for customers of both providers... our objective is to make telepresence as border-free as a phone call."

The trend for carriers to expand their telepresence interoperability is accelerating. This deal, in fact, is the second major deal with a European carrier that Verizon has made in 2012. This pact follows on the heels of one Verizon made with BT in February, which also is based on interconnectivity between the two carriers across Cisco's high-end system.

Tata Communications, in January, said it would team up with nine other service providers-- including Sprint (NYSE: S), Glowpoint (NYSE: GLOW) and TELUS (Toronto: T.TO) in North America, Safaricom in Africa, Telstra (ASX: TLS.AX) in Australia, Etisalat, Qtel and Mobily in the Middle East, and Neotel in South Africa-- to interconnect their business networks.

For more:
- see this release

19/04/2012 - Cisco targets SMBs with new partner program

Cisco used the occasion of its annual summit to launch Partner Plus, a new channel program targeting mid-sized customers. The program is designed to provide partners targeting the small and mid-sized business market with incremental incentives, engineering support, marketing and demand generation and increased sales support, according to Cisco.

The program is part of Cisco's Partner Led strategy, which the company says is designed to reward channel partners to lead the sale with small and mid-sized customers. The approach is part of the $75 million investment that Cisco announced in 2011 for enablement, systems and support capabilities.

Highlights of the program include rebates to partners to help fund marketing and sales training for SMB targets, virtual access to Cisco engineers for technical support, more shared intelligence about customer targets and increased sales training for Cisco partners.

For more:
- see this ChannelPartners report

09/04/2012 - Cisco, Huawei launch war of words over corporate integrity

Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) Chief executive John Chambers' less-than-flattering comments about network equipment vendor Huawei Technologies' trustworthiness drew a quick response from the Chinese company. Chambers remarked that, in the areas of computer security and intellectual property, Huawei didn't always "play by the rules." Huawei wasted no time in responding, calling the comment "unfortunate," and adding that it "has great respect for Cisco and, like Cisco, Huawei has earned trust and respect in the over 140 markets in which we do business... Contrary to suggestions otherwise, as a global information and communications technology leader with almost 50,000 patents filed world-wide, Huawei has a strong history of respect for the intellectual property rights of others, and the protection of our own." No work back, yet, from Cisco, but you can be sure this is one battle that's just heating up. Article

02/04/2012 - Cisco upgrades push Jabber to center stage

Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) hasn't always made a big deal out of its Jabber IM product, but the company has announced some new features that is likely to push the product onto the same consumer-awareness level as its No. 1 competitor, Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Skype.

The company announced a number of product improvements at last week's Enterprise Connect, focusing on TelePresence and Jabber, designed to make collaboration easier.

At the top of the list was Jabber's extension to iPad, a tip of the hat to Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) hot tablet and its impact on enterprise and collaboration. It's also being extended to Windows. The move will allow Jabber customers to collaborate from anywhere and across the most popular operating systems utilizing high definition video, voice, presence, instant messaging, desktop sharing, conferencing and visual voicemail.

Cisco said it also planned to expand Jabber's native integration with TelePresence, giving mobile users a way to initiate and connect into a TelePresence session.

On the high-end, Cisco also introduced a new, three-screen TelePresence platform--the TX9000 Series--that delivers HD quality video and collaboration capabilities like Cisco WebEx. It's also designed to be interoperable with all standards-based endpoints from other vendors.

For more:
- see this release
- see The VAR Guy blog

25/03/2012 - Sprint rolls out cloud UC play with Cisco

Sprint is teaming with Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) to roll out a new hosted unified communications offering it believes will be a major hit with its existing customers and will help attract new customers as well.

Sprint's Complete Collaboration is being unveiled today and is, the company said, a comprehensive hosted and fully managed unified communications (UC) bundle available today for businesses. Sprint said it's launching the cloud play in response to customer demand.

"Two years ago, we began hearing from our customers that they wanted their IT organizations to focus on more strategic and mission critical aspects of their businesses," Mike McRoberts, Sprint's director of product management and development, told FierceEnterpriseCommunications. "While they were interested in moving to unified communications, they didn't want to tie up resources and cash. They wanted us to give them a complete in-the-cloud unified communications solution. A little more than a year ago, we decided we needed to take some action, and about the same time, Cisco was coming out with its hosted communications services."

The result is Sprint's new play, which bundles connectivity through SIP Trunking, IP and video telephony, integrated messaging, collaboration tools, user endpoints and enhanced mobile integration. Sprint decided to bake in the SIP Trunking in the core offer and provide more efficient trunking options through aggregation and bursting, as well as an end-to-end UC platform with a consistent experience across all collaboration tools, operating systems and endpoints.

Sprint Complete Collaboration is delivered over an all-IP network, and it is powered by a fully integrated Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution platform and most current software licensing.

Sprint's offering, like more and more UC plays coming to market today, is aimed heavily at mobile users.

"We're going to give our customers an end-to-end, fully managed unified communications, with SIP trunking, and enhanced mobile integration," said McRoberts. "We recognize most of our customers don't want to be tied to a phone in the office, they want to take their smartphone with them."

McRoberts said the new offering supports other mobile platforms beside Sprint's.

"We recognize that we really don't have any customers in the enterprise general business space that are 100 percent Sprint mobile endpoints.

Sprint's move into UC is a change of pace for the operator, which is offering this initiative on a per-seat basis as opposed to a purchase or rental agreement. The model is designed to allow businesses to grow and contract as needed without major headaches from an operator.

"Going to the cloud allows them to have the flexibility in their business they need ," McRoberts said.

With this roll out, Sprint says it's the first Cisco partner to bring to market a Cisco HCS powered solution that integrates both enhanced mobility and SIP Trunking to a fully managed bundle that enables collaboration for all employees. And the cloud service isn't the last one Sprint plans to launch this year, it said.

McRoberts said offering a comprehensive, end-to-end solution is also aimed at helping customers avoid the hassles of having to speak to multiple vendors when there's a problem.

"With this," he said, "we give them one throat to choke."

The service will come in three flavors:

Voice-centric for businesses that need just voice call management and basic UC functions;
Standard, which includes all voice features plus enhanced collaboration through IM, presence and desktop sharing; and,
Premium, which includes voice features and collaboration tools, plus mobile presence and support for a wide range of user endpoints.

McRoberts said Sprint sees the move of U.C. into the cloud as one that addresses an unmet need of its customers.

"We had most of the elements in place; we just didn't have it all," he said. :The reality is that this is our first big step into these cloud services. It's more of an offensive move than a defensive one, and [it] created some incremental revenue in the process."

For more:
- see this release

18/03/2012 - SaleCrunch offers to buy Cisco's WebEx business

New York-based meeting platform SalesCrunch has reached out to Cisco in an effort to "help" the networking giant further focus its core business. SalesCrunch points out that since Cisco acquired WebEx for $3.2 billion in 2007, it has sold or closed a few of its other "non-core" businesses, most notably the Flip video camera and Umi Telepresence. SalesCrunch said that as part of an acquisition it would migrate all WebEx users over to its own product. Of course, there is a punch; SalesCrunh is only offering Cisco $1 for the business, along with a 15 percent equity in itself. Cisco's collaboration business generated revenue in excess of $1 billion in the second quarter of fiscal year 2012. A Cisco spokesperson called the offer a "cute publicity stunt" and said it has no interest in selling the business. Article

15/03/2012 - Study: $22B spending on videoconferencing, telepresence through 2016

New research forecasts that videoconferencing and telepresence spending will reach a cumulative $22 billion in the next five years.

The research, from Infonetics, said fourth quarter sales globally were up 15 percent in the quarter sequentially to $882 million. The $882 million was a record for any quarter, the company said.

But, that growth was overshadowed by the full year's numbers. Infonetics said 2011 sales of videoconferencing and telepresence equipment was $2.99 billion, a 34 percent jump from 2010.

The market, said Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst for enterprise networks and video at Infonetics, is being fueled by the proliferation of video-capable equipment, demographic and communication trends that favor video, industry use cases like tele-learning and tele-medicine, and most importantly, customer demand.

"Sales of telepresence and videoconferencing equipment surged in the past two years, with growth accelerating in 2011 as video took off on enterprise IP PBX systems," he said.

Perennial market leader Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), which owns the high-end telepresence segment, increased its market share 3 points to 52.5 percent. The company's specialty, dedicated room video systems, made up over half the enterprise videoconferencing equipment market in 2011. Infonetics said it expected that to continue as the biggest revenue-generator among enterprise video solutions

PBX-based systems had the strongest performance for the year, growing 80 percent as they offer a cost-effective way to enjoy multi-modal communication using existing infrastructure.

For more:
- see this release

12/03/2012 - Intelbras, Cisco partner on Brazilian UC play

Brazilian IP telephony manufacturer Intelbras and Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) are partnering to offer a unified communications suite designed for the Brazilian market, which will help Cisco make inroads in the rebounding Latin American UC market. The deal features the Cisco Business Edition 3000 and licenses Cisco UC technology for specific Intelbras IP telephones and voice gateways.

The news comes on the heels of last month's initial announcement that the two companies would collaborate on a UC offering.

"This cooperation with Intelbras represents a big step forward for our presence in the Brazilian market. We are expanding Cisco's offerings to small and medium-sized businesses in Brazil with innovative approaches", said Rodrigo Abreu, CEO of Cisco in Brazil.

Research and Markets recently reported that the Latin American market is coming off several years of sluggish growth. But pressure to cut expenses has resulted in more aggressive adoption of conferencing solutions and applications that could increase collaboration performed well. Moreover, soft phones, unified clients and videoconferencing tools witnessed an upswing in unit sales in 2010; they are forecast to continue strong growth in revenues, as they increase integration with different vendors solutions.

Vendors of UC are making all-out efforts to raise awareness on the advantages of their solutions. As competition intensifies, companies are scouting for better methods to promote UC. Partnerships, alliances and interoperability are the key strategies being implemented.

The Cisco/Intelbras play is a good example of that strategy, and it's targeted at SMBs with 50 to 300 seats. It'll be marketed starting next month as the CIP60300 through the Intelbras integrator channel in Brazil, which includes some 10,000 partners. The platform integrates voice, video, mobility, messaging, conferencing and voice gateway services at multiple locations.

Cisco said the system deploys easily and provides Digital E1 trunking interfaces for connection to conventional fixed-line telephone operators and the ability to interconnect with VoIP operators using SIP trunking connections.

"The integration of Cisco technology into the Intelbras IP phones and gateways is the start of a solid cooperative effort to bring innovations into the local market, including those that involve IT expertise, engineering and research and development," said Intelbras CEO Altair Silvestri.

Intelbras has developed a set of IP endpoints specific to the Brazilian market, the company said. The IP phone model TIP100-S will also be available to be used in conjunction with the Cisco Unified Communications technology. The IP terminal options also include the Cisco Unified SIP Phone 3900 Series and Unified IP Phone 6900 and 8900 Series.

For more:
- see this release

05/03/2012 - Telepresence leading video-conferencing boom

editor's corner

How hot is the videoconferencing market? Anecdotally, it's screaming. Driven by an increasingly mobile workforce, the desire of corporations to trim travel budgets and by the reality of a more far-flung workforce and corporate structure, videoconferencing is quickly becoming the "it" technology.

Tablets, of course, have had a huge impact. The decreasing cost of the technology, too, is playing a major part in pushing it down market, attracting SMBs and home users that would never have considered it just a year ago.

From a numbers standpoint, a new study says videoconferencing revenue in the fourth quarter of 2011 grew nearly 25 percent, pushing global revenue figures for the technology to $807.9 million.

The study, from International Data Corporation (IDC), said the single-codec telepresence market led the boom. Its revenues for the quarter grew a whopping 38.7 percent compared to a year ago, coming in at $444.1 million; it now accounts for 55 percent of the total market.

"There is little doubt about the success videoconferencing and telepresence have had over the past few years, fueled by strong revenue and shipment growth rates and the increasing popularity of video among enterprises," said Petr Jirovsky, senior research analyst at Worldwide Networking Trackers Research. "The enterprise videoconferencing and telepresence market will continue to be one of the fastest growing networking markets for the foreseeable future."

Overall, the year was a good one for videoconferencing, said IDC, with the enterprise videoconferencing market revenue growing 20.5 percent from a year ago to reach $2.7 billion, a significant bump over the previous year's growth of 16.6 percent.

IDC said the steady growth points to accelerated adoption of video in the enterprise, growth that's been spurred by more well-defined video use cases among organizations across a range of vertical market segments.

Strong adoption--and cases for future adoption--exists in healthcare, higher education, financial services, legal, law enforcement, manufacturing and retail, said IDC.

"We also expect growth over the next several years to be bolstered by the impact of video integrated with vendors' unified communications and collaboration portfolios, and increasing video usage among small work groups, desktop users and mobile device users," said Rich Costello, senior analyst, Enterprise Communications Infrastructure, at IDC.

The growth has been a bonanza for companies in the video infrastructure equipment market--MCUs, gateways, video network servers and appliances, for example, saw nearly 19 percent growth in the quarter, compared to a year ago, ringing up revenues of $215.1 million.

IDC said an increasing trend it sees is the gradual adoption of high-end immersive telepresence- typified by systems from Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), Polycom (Nasdaq: PLCM) and Radvision (Nasdaq: RVSN)-- by a broader array of enterprise customers. The segment saw a 21.6 percent bump for the year, recording revenue of $314.8 million. Not surprisingly, Cisco remained the segment market leader, and now holds 54.3 percent of the market, up from 51.7 percent in the third quarter of 2011 and 50.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010. Cisco saw revenue from the segment grow 35 percent in the quarter and recorded nearly 49 percent growth for the full year.

Polycom, by comparison, saw a 15 percent revenue bump for the quarter and 20.8 percent for the year.

All indications are that 2012 is likely to be an even more profitable year for the videoconferencing segment. More companies are looking to cooperate in resolving interoperability issue, the price of the technology continues to drop, and it's getting easier to use. Just as important to the market? It's beginning to stir customers' curiosity. Potential clients are starting to ask, "Show me how I can use this," instead of "What is it?" And that's a big deal.--Jim.

27/02/2012 - Cisco CEO: We passed on buying Skype

Cisco had the opportunity to buy free Voip provider Skype, but passed on it, CEO John Chambers said, worried that a purchase could put it at odds with its core customer base of service providers. Skype, instead, was bought by Microsoft for $8.5 billion. "I can say it now: We had a chance to make that acquisition a very long time ago, and we felt that it would be difficult for our service provider customers to both understand and to benefit from," Chambers said during an interview. Cisco, meanwhile, has asked the European Union to take another look at its decision to approve the merger between Skype and Microsoft, saying it doesn't want to derail the deal, but does want the EU to force Skype to open up its technology. Article

27/02/2012 - Cisco pays $271 million for Lightwire

Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) has agreed to pay $271 million in cash for optical interconnect company Lightwire, as it positions itself to better meet data-centers and service providers high-speed networking needs.

Cisco said Lightwire develops advanced optical interconnect technology for high-speed networking applications. The acquisition provides Cisco with complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) photonics technology, which will enable service providers and data centers to meet the growing demands of video, data, voice, mobility, and cloud services. The company called the acquisition "an exciting milestone in our goal of delivering cost-effective, high-speed networks with the next generation of optical connectivity."

"Lightwire brings a strong team with cutting-edge expertise and thought leadership in silicon engineering," Hilton Romanski, VP of corporate business development, said in a blog post.

"The Lightwire acquisition is a great example of Cisco's commitment to build, buy, and partner to drive innovation... and is a strong follow-on to the acquisition of CoreOptics, another key acquisition in the advanced silicon arena. Together, they will enable cost-effective, scalable, converged packet-optical networks to address the needs of our customers and continue Cisco's long track record of technology innovation and leadership."

Lightwire CTO and founder Kal Shastri will join Cisco as a distinguished engineer.

The deal is expected to close in the third quarter.

Upon the close of the acquisition, Lightwire employees will be integrated into Cisco's Transceiver Modules Group Business Unit and Supply Chain Operations Group. Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay approximately $271 million in cash and retention-based incentives in exchange for all shares of Lightwire. The acquisition is subject to various standard closing conditions and is expected to be complete in the third quarter of Cisco's fiscal year 2012.

Cisco CEO John Chambers during the company's earnings call earlier this month said the networking giant would again be on the hunt for suitable mergers and acquisitions this year.

Cisco shares closed at $20.14 Friday; the stock has traded between $13.30-$20.49 over the past 52 weeks.

For more
- see this release

23/02/2012 - Cisco extends lead in 'resurgent' Ethernet switch market

editor's corner

A strong performance in the fourth quarter in the Ethernet switch market helped the segment finish on a positive note for the year and up from a year ago. That could be good news for a nervous telecom equipment industry as 2012--and the specter of reduced service provider spending--looms.

Global sales for the fourth quarter topped $6.06 billion, 5.5 percent up from the year-ago quarter, and up sequentially 1.2 percent, reported IDC Research.

Conversely, the worldwide router market slid 3 percent from the like quarter in 2010, IDC said in its Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Networks Tracker report.

And, while Ethernet switch sales in North America declined 2 percent from a year ago, despite a very strong third quarter, the rest of the world showed more robust buying. Sales in Latin America, where a boom in VoIP and IMS equipment also took place last year, were up 29 percent. Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and the Asia-Pacific regions showed strong growth, 11.9 percent, and 8.4 percent respectively.

During the most recent earnings season, several vendors pointed to reduced service provider capex as one cause for underperformance in the sector, and as a result they issued cautious guidance about the first quarter of 2012.

Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) CEO John Chambers, despite a robust quarter, this month noted the "uncertainty in the global markets" made it "too early to determine the effects on capital spending in calendar year 2012," and said Cisco would be "conservative in our expectations for the third quarter."

Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR), meanwhile, blamed tight service provider budgets for causing its profits to drop by nearly 50 percent in the fourth quarter and warned that this quarter likely would be worse.

Nevertheless, the second half of 2011 was a strong one for the enterprise networking market.

"With Gigabit Ethernet having recovered to a growth trajectory, and with 10GbE and 40GbE expected to drive incremental growth in datacenter and campus core deployments, the Ethernet switch market is expected to show moderate growth in 2012," said IDC's Rohit Mehra.

For the full year 2011, the worldwide Ethernet Layer 2/3 switch market was essentially flat over 2010, with revenues of $21.1 billion, while the worldwide router market performed better with a 5.7 percent growth over 2010. 10GbE switch (Layer 2/3) revenue increased 32.9 percent year over year, and 5.1 percent over the prior quarter. 10GbE port shipments grew to a record 2.8 million ports in the quarter. For the full year 2011, 10GbE market revenues grew 26.5 percent over 2010, while port shipments more than doubled during the same period.

The router market was, and is likely to remain, a little rockier.

In the fourth quarter, IDC said, the worldwide router market increased 7.3 percent sequentially, but was down 2.3 percent year-over-year, partially due to an "exceptional" performance in the year-ago quarter.

Latin America, again, was a bonus, showing growth of 16.6 percent, followed by APAC's 15.1 bump. Both North America and EMEA slumped, down 16.4 percent and 3.7 percent respectively from a year ago.

Cisco's resurgence in the quarter, with an Ethernet switch market share that topped 64 percent, 69.5 percent in the 10GbE segment, was no surprise. The rebound for Cisco began in the third quarter, and carried through the fourth quarter. Will it continue? Or will it be victimized, à la Juniper, by service providers that tighten their belts?--Jim

23/02/2012 - Spanlink gains advanced Cisco TelePresence status

Despite carrying what some see as a premium price tag, the market for dedicated telepresence solutions is continuing to expand, and Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) and Polycom (Nasdaq: PLCM) continue to be the leaders in the segment.

Minneapolis-based Spanlink Communications, a Cisco partner in contact centers and collaboration solutions, has become the latest company to expand their own expertise in the market, achieving the TelePresence Video Advanced Authorized Technology Provider (ATP) status from Cisco.

The ATP status means Spanlink is moving to provide a full-service package to its clients.

"Spanlink is known in the marketplace for its expertise in contact center, and with Cisco TelePresence, we are excited to offer our customers life-like, face-to-face collaboration," said Shyam Koneru, Spanlink's director of UC & collaboration engineering.

In addition to the TelePresence ATP, Spanlink holds Cisco's Master Specialization in Unified Communications.

For more:
- see this release

20/02/2012 - Study: Single-vendor network has operational edge

Customers want a simple, scalable network that's safe, reliable and easy to administer, says a new report from research firm Deloitte Consulting.

The new study, which focused on enterprises with between 2,000 and 10,000 users, found that cost tended to be a lesser factor with customers than potential operational risk.

The Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO)-commissioned study found that there was "no material cost differences" between single-vendor and multi-vendor architectures over time, reports CRN.

Deloitte conducted extensive interviews with 15 enterprise customers that used a variety of networking products.

"A big takeaway is that when talking to business leaders, they don't look at the network as a network budget, they look at it as an IT and business operations budget," said Chris Weitz, director of technology strategy and architecture at Deloitte Consulting. "Operationally and functionally, what we clearly find from customers surveys is the classic 'keep it simple' rule. Complex systems tend to break down. And this isn't about standards, but about operational usage and operational effects."

The report contends that multi-vendor networks oftentimes struggle with interoperability as vendors aren't always aware of competing products capabilities. Plus, products on different refresh cycles may cut into potential savings "by accelerated depreciation losses caused by retiring older equipment before it has reached the end of its useful life,"reported Deloitte.

For more:
- see this report

Special Report: Ensuring interoperability

Related articles:
Single-vendor or multi-vendor?

16/02/2012 - Cisco wants EU to re-examine Skype-Microsoft deal

Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) is asking a European court to take another look at the EU's approval of Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype, seeking to have regulators force the VoIP provider to work with products like Cisco's videoconferencing offerings.

"Imagine how difficult it would be if you were limited to calling people who only use the same carrier or if your phone could only call certain brands and not others," wrote Marthin De Beer, SVP of Cisco's video and collaboration group in a blog post. "Cisco wants to avoid this future for video communications."

The company has appealed the European Commission's approval of the Microsoft/Skype merger to the General Court of the European Union. It said Messagenet, a European VoIP service provider, has joined in the appeal.

Messagenet, in September, filed its own complaint seeking to block the deal.

The company was seeking to have Skype unbundled from Windows. It also asked regulators to open up Skype's 124 million-strong Internet phone network to competitors' services by having Microsoft publish Skype's computer coding to allow services to interconnect. Messagenet contended that the merger will likely make the software even more interoperable than it is today.

"The first effects of the proposed merger will be an even more rigid approach to interoperability of Skype services so to exclude competitors from the market," the company wrote in its filing.

Cisco, meanwhile, took pains to explain it isn't opposed to the deal, but that it wants the products to be interoperable.

"Cisco...believes the European Commission should have placed conditions that would ensure greater standards-based interoperability, to avoid any one company from being able to seek to control the future of video communications," De Beer wrote. "Our goal is to make video calling as easy and seamless as email is today. Making a video-to-video call should be as easy as dialing a phone number. Today, however, you can't make seamless video calls from one platform to another, much to the frustration of consumers and business users alike."

Microsoft said it was confident the decision would stand up on appeal.

"The European Commission conducted a thorough investigation of the acquisition, in which Cisco actively participated, and approved the deal in a 36-page decision without any conditions," a spokesman said.

For more:
- read this Bloomberg article
- see this Cisco blog entry

09/02/2012 - Google, Cisco find it's easy to be green

How green is the valley? Well, according to GreenPeace, which just released its Cool IT report, which measures how Internet and telecom companies stack up vis-à-vis their technology, energy consumption and political advocacy, it's getting better behind increasingly eco-friendly Google and Cisco. Google got the the top overall score (53 out of 100), while Cisco (49 out of 100), Ericsson (48 out of 100) and Fujitsu (48 out of 100) followed shortly behind. The worst: Oracle (10 out of 100) at the very bottom, and TCS (11 out of 100) and Telefonica (11 out of 100) at the second and third to last spots. Article

09/02/2012 - Cisco plans more M&As as strong Q2 tops expectations

It appears to be back to business as usual for Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), which today reported a 27 percent bump in second quarter earnings from a year ago, topped analyst's expectations, and increased its quarterly dividend from 2 cents to 8 cents a share. The quarter included record revenue and comes on the heels of two previous quarters where Cisco outdid Wall Street forecasts.

The networking giant's EPS were 47 cents, up from 37 cents per share a year ago, on net income of $2.2 billion from $1.5 billion last year, handily beating analysts' expectations of 43 cents per share. Revenue was up 10 percent to $11.5 billion (Wall Street had looked for $11.23 billion), from $10.41 billion in the like quarter a year ago.

Chief executive John Chambers said the earnings reflected strength across the breadth of Cisco's offerings, saying the performance "goes way beyond routing and switching."

"Our vision and strategy are working very well... It's a continuous journey and we're making good progress on it," Chambers said during an investor call. "Record revenues, earnings, growing profits faster than sales. I don't think it could have been a much better quarter in terms of the trends."

Chambers, who three quarters ago embarked on a $1 billion cost-cutting campaign, closing or selling under-performing businesses, trimming staff by 10,000 and vowing to contain expenses, said the company had "done exactly as we said in our five year plan," and got to the $1 billion expense reduction target a quarter ahead of schedule.

The company has even begun to add back some of its workforce, adding 400 jobs in the quarter to bring its headcount to 63,800, still significantly short of its peak in 2011 of 73,408.

Chambers also indicated that Cisco, which has acquired some 150 companies in its history and currently has some $5 billion in cash ion hand, would again be looking at increasing its M&A activity after curtailing it while the company restructured.

"We've used acquisitions as a part of our strategy for most of our history. We've been at this longer than most in the industry, and we believe we are very good at it," he said. "...We expect to be more active with acquisitions in the quarters and years to come, selectively adding to our portfolio... As we have in the past, we continue to be disciplined and thoughtful in regards to price, value and strategic fit to meet our approach to M&A."

For more:
- see this release
- see this Seeking Alpha transcript

08/02/2012 - Radvision bests Q4 expectations; issues poor Q1 guidance

Telepresence vendor Radvision (Nasdaq: RVSN), which earlier this year upped its fourth quarter guidance, today reported strong revenue and profit numbers that beat analyst estimates.

The company reported revenues of $21.8 million for the quarter, down some 18 percent from the $26.6 million it reported in the year-ago quarter, but in-line with the $21.5 million to $22 million it anticipated. Earnings per share meanwhile, beat estimates by some 15 percent. The company expected a loss of between 25-28 cents per diluted share on a GAAP basis, and 18-21 cents per diluted share on a non-GAAP basis, but reported a net loss for the quarter of $4.5 million, or 24 cents per diluted share, on a GAAP basis, and $3.1 million, or 17 cents per diluted share, on a non-GAAP basis. This compares with net income of $1.4 million, or 7 cents per diluted share, on a GAAP basis, and $2.9 million, or 16 cents per diluted share, on non-GAAP basis, a year ago.

The company closed the quarter looking for a bump in revenue from increased endpoint sales, and it got what it expected.

Chief executive Boaz Raviv said the sales were up 55 percent sequentially, and was "the main driver behind the better than expected performance of our Video Business Unit, and of our fourth quarter results overall."

He said video infrastructure products sales were up 25 percent sequentially, with sales to service providers--a target for the company--nearly doubling. "The strength of our technology and the broadening of our portfolio of solutions for the SMB market contributed to our record endpoint sales and success with Service Providers in the fourth quarter," he said.

The company this month also introduced its next-gen video system for the high end market, the SCOPIA XT5000, an endpoint it thinks will have a big impact on the SMB market, which Raviv said was "a significant step forward in our end-to-end strategy and it is key to our return to profitability and future growth."

Nonetheless, Radvision's outlook for the current quarter was anything but upbeat. It said it expects first quarter revenues of $17 million and a net loss of approximately $7.6 million, or 41 cents per diluted share, on a GAAP basis, and $6.8 million, or 37 cents per diluted share, on a non-GAAP basis. Wall Street was looking for revenues of $19.35 million and a net loss of about 24 cents per diluted share.

The Israeli company, which formerly was a supplier for Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO)'s telepresence offering, has struggled to regain its footing since Cisco bought Tandberg in 2009. It also faces stiff competition from Polycom (Nasdaq: PLCM).

For more:
- see this release

06/02/2012 - Cisco looking for a strong quarter as rivals struggle

Despite sluggish capex spending globally by service providers, Cisco is expected to report strong results Wednesday after the bell when it unveils its second fiscal quarter numbers; that could be more bad news for rivals like Juniper Networks, which last month reported a weak fourth quarter and came up short of analyst expectations for the future, causing its stock to slide. Cisco, on the other hand, is likely to continue the rebound CEO John Chambers has engineered over the past two quarters, with gains in both sales and profit. The bigger issue, of course, will be: Can the networking giant continue to grow as telcos pull back on their spending? Article

06/02/2012 - Nicira looks to disrupt networking space with A-list client roster

Nicira, a network virtualization startup with more than $50 million in venture funding from the likes of Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners and NEA, as well as VMware founder Diane Greene and venture capitalist Andy Rachleff, emerged from stealth mode today with an A-list of customers including AT&T (NYSE: T), eBay, Fidelity Investments, Rackspace and NTT.

The company said its Network Virtualization Platform technology was task-built for cloud networking. It allows owners of multiple networks, like AT&T, to get extra capacity when it's needed without having to make huge capex investments. The software-based system creates a distributed virtual network infrastructure in cloud data centers that is completely decoupled and independent from physical network hardware, essentially expanding the pipe through which data travels.

Nicira said NVP is a scalable software system implemented at the network edge and managed by distributed clustered controller architecture. It forms a thin software layer that treats the physical network as an IP backplane, allowing the creation of virtual networks that have the same properties and services as physical networks.

"All of the intelligence, all of the control, all of the services now get done in the virtual space," chief executive Stephen Mullaney told AllThingsDigital.

The technology potentially alters the network landscape, landscape currently occupied by companies like Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) and Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR), dramatically, specifically because it eliminates the need for service providers and companies like eBay and Rackspace, to continually build out their own networks. Less build out means more troubles for companies selling hardware.

Commercially available since July, NVP is built on a usage-based, subscription-pricing model.

For more:
- see this release
- see this AllThingsDigital article

23/01/2012 - Is your video conferencing technology giving others a look inside your business?

editor's corner

Businesses communicate in a lot of ways and, increasingly, are turning to an array of videoconferencing tools as the technology becomes easier to use and more ubiquitous. It provides an upfront, cost-effective opportunity for virtual face-to-face meetings.

The technology is blossoming; Nearly every week, a news release comes in about the latest service to launch, interoperability deal reached or about a new product rolling out targeting the SME and SMB markets, not to mention the near daily releases that pop up with the newest consumer offering.

The technology has, like a YouTube video, seemingly gone viral. Its mobility, its ease of use has begun to make it so commonplace that it's increasingly become just another app or program that users click to use and forget about.

In fact, ABI Research senior analyst Subha Rama said in a webcast last week that the technology, which has been gathering steam, was likely to explode once LTE becomes widely available, especially with so many more dual camera devices coming to market.

"When the technology integrates with a popular mobile device the issue resolves almost instantly," said Rama during a Webcast on Thursday.

But there's some new concerns about videoconferencing and security that are bound to rattle some cages in the coming week, and they're extreme enough that they could potentially cause adoption to stutter until they're resolved.

In a New York Times story today, a security officer for Rapid 7, told of how he created a computer program that, in two hours, discovered 5,000 open videoconference systems that were outside the firewall of their companies and that were configured to automatically answer calls.

The companies included law firms, venture capital companies, pharmaceutical firms, universities and medical centers.

Moore said he was able to call into systems made by Polycom (Nasdaq: PLCM), Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), Logitech (Nasdaq: LOGI)'s LifeSize, Sony and others. Polycom, the Times said, ships all of its platforms with the auto-answer feature enabled by default (which can easily be changed by users, Polycom told the Times).

"It boils down to whether organizations are aware of the risk, and our research indicates that many, even well-heeled venture capital firms, were not aware and do not implement even the most basic of security measures," he said.

Mike Tuchen, CEO of Rapid 7, warned that companies simply have dropped the ball on videoconferencing security, especially as videoconferencing's popularity has grown.

"The entry bar has fallen to the floor. These are literally some of the world's most important boardrooms--this is where their most critical meetings take place--and there could be silent attendees in all of them," he said, sounding an ominous tone.

"Any reasonably computer literate 6-year-old can try this at home."

How secure is videoconferencing? Is the rapid expansion of the technology putting sensitive business information at risk? And, does the surge of new, less expensive videoconferencing solutions open the door to hackers even wider?

Love to hear your thoughts.--Jim

28/11/2011 - Cisco to HP: 'Support employee freedom,' as it lands another rival exec

There's little love lost between Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) and HP (NYSE: HPQ), the animus went very public at Interop this year and has been percolating a long time.

The latest installment comes in the form of blog from Cisco's legal counsel in reaction to a lawsuit from HP against one of its employees jumping to Cisco.

The unidentified employee (who AllThingsDigital suggests is former HP StorageWorks' chief technologist Paul Perez), who worked at Hewlett-Packard for more than two decades, left HP and moved to California, where he asked a court to rule HP's non-compete clause unenforceable in California. After a hearing was scheduled and Cisco's legal department reached out to HP's in, it said, an attempt to avoid legal action, the proverbial, um, spit hit the fan.

An attorney working for the employee in Texas spotted an HP filing online for a scheduled emergency hearing to block him from taking the job with Cisco. When the attorney showed up and told the Texas judge that a case already was underway in California, the judge tossed the case.

The judge in California, meanwhile, has since allowed the former HP employee to join Cisco.

In a blog post last week, Mark Chandler points out that the lawsuit against the HP employee was the third such action HP has taken in the past two years, attributing it to employees "seeking safe ground amidst the chaos of executive turnover," adding that "we can probably expect to see more desperate moves to lock up human capital."

Chandler questions the success of trying to retain employees through the threat of litigation, and tongue-in-check writes that HP could change it slogan from "HP Invent" to "HP Sue."

Chandler points out that "in Silicon Valley, human capital is as mobile as financial capital," and contends that the Valley's growth has been driven, in part, by the idea that employees are free "to find the best way to use their skills and advance their careers."

"Somehow, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard didn't see a need to build a company based on suing people who might want to leave," he writes. "It's a sad day when great companies think they need to sue their own employees over and over again to stop them from bettering themselves in their chosen profession."

As Chandler points out, although some states will enforce non-compete clauses in employment contracts, companies don't have to pursue them unless they want to.

With both companies competing for a relatively limited pool of top execs, and, in a market that has become so competitive and profits slim as margins have tightened, it iss doubtful that the rivalry between the two will cool on any level.

In fact, with new CEO Meg Whitman being pushed to turn things around at HP yesterday (and with a board that has a notoriously itchy trigger finger when it comes to firing CEOs), the likelihood that there will be more pressure flowing downstream is likely to lead to more defections.

Chandler, meanwhile, writes that Cisco, regardless of where its employees live and work, will abide by California's rule in favor of employee mobility.

Cisco, he said, is putting up a challenge to HP and Whitman, noting that the new CEO has been "deeply steeped in Silicon Valley's environment of mobility and opportunity," to "support employee freedom and stop suing employees just for leaving."

Fewer lawsuits? In this environment? Good luck.--Jim

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