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Why HP ProCurve is dismantling Cisco's market share on a deal-by-deal basis

It's my opinion that Cisco's loss of share has in itself become the networking industry's newest market transition.
Submitted by Brad Reese on Thu, 07/09/09 - 8:52pm.

I spoke on the phone today with the Vice President and General Manager of HP ProCurve - Karl Soderlund, and learned why HP ProCurve is dismantling Cisco's market share on a deal-by-deal basis, for instance:

If you trade-in your Cisco equipment, HP ProCurve will take 20% off its list price.

By doing so, I feel that HP ProCurve is whacking Cisco in its most vulnerable spot, its lack of pricing flexibility.

And why does Cisco lack pricing flexibility?

Well, mostly because Cisco VARs no longer have enough margin left to profitably match HP ProCurve pricing on a deal-by-deal basis. Furthermore in my opinion, while Cisco salivates over 30 to 50 new market adjacencies, Cisco's loss of market share has in itself become the networking industry's newest market transition.

It appears HP ProCurve is calling the shots now, because during my conversation with Soderlund, he knowingly stated, "We’ve seen Cisco offer price-matching discounts to existing customers in order to equal ProCurve prices – and react to ProCurve’s momentum and market share gains. ProCurve wants to make all Cisco customers aware of this offer, giving every existing Cisco customer a discount, simply by contacting ProCurve to participate in the deal.

"HP ProCurve continues to win business and gain market share through increased awareness in the market. Customers and partners are becoming aware of the tremendous benefits HP ProCurve provides by offering the best value, and in this current economic climate, more companies are forced to look at alternative solutions in order to find the best innovation and best price. Those customers are re-evaluating their total cost of ownership and are turning to HP ProCurve.

"HP ProCurve is the price performance leader and has a TCO that no competitor can match. We've built our business around it. We’re currently offering VARs and end-users a variety of incentives to help them win more deals, but overall, we’re not changing anything, we’re executing on our existing strategy."

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Microsoft cancels Response Point (VoIP/PBX solution for Small Business)

voip, response point, pbx, microsoft office communications server, unified communications
Submitted by jschurman on Thu, 07/09/09 - 7:53pm.

As you may have already heard, Microsoft has cancelled its Microsoft Response Point product, which stemmed out of Microsoft Research's Startup Business Accelerator/Communications Innovation Center group.  This hopeful compact small business PBX/key set system replacement had a lot of opportunity, but due to the product's inability to integrate with Microsoft's larger Unified Communications vision and product roadmap; it simply did not fit in.  The current version of Response Poin

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Microsoft admits it knew of the IE, zero-day ActiveX hole for months

Patch is "on track" for next Tuesday but MS recommends you don't wait for it
Submitted by Microsoft Subnet on Thu, 07/09/09 - 7:45pm.

Microsoft this afternoon responded to accusastions that it knew about a critical IE ActiveX hole for as long as 18 months. The hole is being actively exploited by hackers. To its credit, Microsoft came clean and admitted it did indeed know since the spring of 2008.

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Cisco, VMware, NetApp testing multi-tenant cloud

The three are likely creating a service to sell to colo data centers, but this puts Cisco closer to a cloud of its own
Submitted by Cisco Subnet on Thu, 07/09/09 - 6:54pm.

Yesterday NetApp revealed that Cisco, VMware and NetApp are testing an end-to-end secure multi-tenancy platform.  While it is well known that the three data center amigos have been feverishly pitching their joint so-called "private cloud" architecture, private clouds are built for the exclusive use of one company. A multi-tenancy infrastructure has but one purpose, to allow multiple companies to share the same hardware. It is a cloud service.

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The iPhone 3GS-for-Speedy isn't quite as speedy as we thought.

Upstream, it tops out at 384 kbps, according to report
Submitted by John Cox on Thu, 07/09/09 - 5:44pm.

In a succinct, informative Macworld article, Glenn Fleishman explains why.

Simply put: for pulling down data, the 3GS can use AT&T's newer HSDPA service, at 7.2 Mbps. The corresponding upstream service is HSUPA, at either 1.4 or 1.9 Mbps. AT&T is building out this higher speed network.

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Microsoft introduces Performance Based exams – at last …

SQL Server
Submitted by Brian Egler on Thu, 07/09/09 - 5:42pm.

For many years now, I have been an advocate of “skill-based” or “performance-based” certifications which involve actually performing the tasks of the job in order to prove you are qualified. A simple concept. Now Microsoft have joined the bandwagon, which is great…

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Winners of the Global Knowledge Cisco training, and Cisco Press books

Free training, free books and a good time was had by all
Submitted by Cisco Subnet on Thu, 07/09/09 - 4:25pm.

We are delighted to announce the winners to our June giveaways. The grand prize winner of a Cisco training course courtesy of Global Knowledge was awarded to Raymond Cooley Jr., a network engineer for defense contractor, Serco.

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Wyse VDA Set to Help Accelerate Desktop Virtualization Adoption

Desktop Virtualization
Submitted by markbowker on Thu, 07/09/09 - 12:17pm.

ESG recently surveyed 480 North American and Western European IT decision makers and found significant early use of and interest in VDI Technology.

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Cisco lost market share in network security appliances and software in 1Q09

Juniper, Check Point and Fortinet all gained market share in 1Q09.
Submitted by Brad Reese on Thu, 07/09/09 - 6:57am.

Jeff Wilson - network security analyst at Infonetics Research, provides further details on why Cisco has lost market share in network security:

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IBM researchers build security software to mask confidential info

IBM MAGEN system is designed to prevent data leakage and allow safer data sharing.
Submitted by Layer 8 on Wed, 07/08/09 - 10:17pm.

Researchers at IBM have developed software that uses optical character recognition and screen scraping to identify and cover up confidential data.

According to IBM the driving idea behind the MAGEN (Masking Gateway for Enterprises) system is to prevent data leakage and allow the sharing of data while safeguarding sensitive business data. 

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IP routers in the sky and Gigabit Ethernet at sea

Cisco announces details about Internet Routers In Space while the Navy brings GigE to destroyers
Submitted by Cisco Subnet on Wed, 07/08/09 - 8:54pm.

Cisco announced more details on its plans to bring IP routers to the world of satellites (or shall we say 'solar system of satellites'?). At its Cisco Live user conference last week, the company said that it was about to launch a trial run of its Internet Routers In Space (IRIS) program with the defense department.

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Microsoft licenses, launches giant library of free IT governance tools

Pact with ISACA integrates its governance tools with Microsoft Operations Framework 4.0
Submitted by Microsoft Subnet on Wed, 07/08/09 - 8:09pm.

Microsoft has licensed two of the industry's leading methods for IT governance, integrated them with its own IT governance framework and made the whole library of materials available for free.

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Ex-Googler says Chrome OS will be a vastly different OS but won’t displace Windows

If successful, Google OS could spawn a whole new class of faster, cheaper, diskless PCs
Submitted by Google Subnet on Wed, 07/08/09 - 7:15pm.

The following is a guest blog written by David Pinkus, a former high-level Google employee who is now senior vice president of information technology for Universal Technical Institute: I think a lightweight, browser-only operating system has been a long-time coming.  It's the actualization of what the network computer dream has been; albeit with the predictable concessions that the network isn't always available, and you need something resident on the machine itself to make it useful.

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Troubleshooting a Failed SQL Server 2008 Installation

SQL Server 2008
Submitted by Ross Mistry on Wed, 07/08/09 - 5:39pm.

Troubleshooting a failed SQL Server 2008 installation

SQL Server 2008 introduces significant enhancements that make installation even easier and more seamless compared to its predecessors.

The SQL Server 2008 Installation Center offers solutions providers a tremendous number of options for planning, installing, upgrading and maintaining a SQL Server implementation.

However, even with these new tools and features, an installation may fail, and solutions providers must understand how to troubleshoot these installations.

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More on Licensing …

SQL Server
Submitted by Brian Egler on Wed, 07/08/09 - 4:42pm.

Since I started talking about licensing again in my previous blog, I thought I’d follow that up with some scenarios from the Microsoft web site. Of course, Microsoft supports multiple releases of SQL Server so the story may be different depending on the release you are under.

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SSD adoption rises

Vendors such as Fusion-IO, Compellent and LSI support newest Tier 0 storage devices.
Submitted by Deni Connor on Wed, 07/08/09 - 4:12pm.

Adoption of solid state drives (SSD) is hot property this week as vendors such as Fusion-IO, Compellent and LSI announced support for the newest Tier 0 storage devices.

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US offering $45 million for huge wind energy test bed

The DOE says such a facility is needed as the US has fallen behind other countries in the race to build ever-larger wind turbines.
Submitted by Layer 8 on Wed, 07/08/09 - 3:00pm.

On a day when one of the largest wind farm plans bit the dust, the US Department of Energy is offering up a five-year, $45 million contract to design and build a large dynamometer facility for testing 5 to 15 MW rated wind turbines and equipment.

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Putting Some Realism into Cisco Certified Architect

Starting a Discussion of the New Top Cisco Certification
Submitted by wendell on Wed, 07/08/09 - 2:41pm.

The Cisco Certified Architect  certification may well be the single biggest addition/change to the Cisco certification space since the introduction of CCNA and CCNP in 1998. In the space of two years, Cisco has taken the pinnacle of the Cisco cert space - the CCIE - and added another cert billed as equivalent for Design issues (CCDE), and then made a new pinnacle to the cert pyramid - the new Cisco Certified Architect cert - sitting on top of the CCDE.. Network World bills it as a Ph.D. in Cisco.

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Google announces plans for yet another PC operating system

Forget Android, the company is gearing up to offer a new Chrome-based OS on netbooks and PCs
Submitted by Google Subnet on Wed, 07/08/09 - 10:37am.

While the world has been focused on the when, how and where of Android appearing on netbooks, Google has been quietly creating yet another operating system, this one based on Chrome and unrelated to Android. Google is going after Microsoft at the jugular vein, yesterday targeting Office applications and e-mail and today the very platform on which PCs have always r

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Dartmouth security researchers: PKI's not so hard

Researchers working to make public key infrastructure even easier to use though
Submitted by Alpha Doggs on Wed, 07/08/09 - 10:31am.

Dartmouth University researchers have received Department of Homeland Security funding to make public key infrastructure easier to use for those looking to secure and authenticate network transactions.

Their PKI Resource Query Protocol (PRQR) is working its way through the IETF standards process.

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