Cisco’s decision to buy Linksys 9 years ago was hailed by most as an indication the company was going to expand into the hotter consumer broadband space. It was clear to some at Cisco even then that margins on the business were going to be low, and so Linksys was a kind of arms-length business…
GigaOM has published its vision of the cloud for 2013 (http://gigaom.com/cloud/what-well-see-in-2013-in-cloud-computing/), and it’s a decent document overall. Still, there are places I think need further comment, and that’s a decent way to open the last week before the holidays, and for many the last working week of 2012. The first point in the GigaOM commentary…
Alcatel-Lucent has secured the financing it needed to shore up its balance sheet and prevent a messy problem, but the company still faces the same demons it’s faced since the merger. Those problems have been enough to stall a giant with the best strategic influence of all network vendors and the best strategic product set. …
One of the fascinating things about SDN is that it’s become even fuzzier than the cloud. We can’t agree on anything about it these days, including the very basic question of how we’d recognize an SDN if we saw one. This level of uncertainty is magnified when we have SDN-related announcements, because more often than…
The big flap today is yet another resurfacing of the notion of an aggressive move by Apple into the TV space. On one hand, the move seems not only logical but inevitable. Apple’s future obviously depends on its ability to keep launching new spaces to counteract the fact that its high-end model will always lose…
The continued buzz over software-defined networking (SDN) is creating the usual “specification creep”, where so many things are claimed to be part of an SDN strategy that we lose sight of what such a strategy would be able to accomplish and what it might look like. This seems like a good time to summarize those…
I want to wish all those who have read my blog through 2012 a happy and prosperous holiday season and wish you the best for 2013! Tom Nolle, President CIMI Holiday 2012 Email and RSS:
Cisco is expected to announce a major strategic shift into software and services today. Why? “The days of boxes are over.” That’s a quote from Cisco’s Chambers that’s welcome from my perspective because it’s true. Of course, it’s been true for a while and Cisco has only now embraced that reality, but at least they…
I got an email on the Emulex/Endace deal, making among other things the obvious comparison between the move and deals like NetScout/OnPath and Riverbed/Opnet. I think some of Cisco’s recent deals, as well as moves by VMware/EMC, could also be called “related”. The problem I have at this point is deciding just what the common…
Today, we’re digesting some interesting data points on two giant market players, Apple and Cisco. Both companies have been the subject of Street research focus and both have demonstrated a mixture of weakness and strength. Because these two players have such a dramatic influence on their markets—and through them on our lives—we need to understand…