Mike Volpi kept his word to his Skype investment group, he got the Father of SIP - Jonathan Rosenberg, to jump ship.
Skype announced Roseberg jumped ship from Cisco the day after our blog story published emails indicating Rosenberg had an interest in discussing Skype with Volpi.
Rosenberg is now Skype's Chief Technology Strategist - responsible for Skype's overall architecture and technology strategy. Read more
At least Cisco is warning Unified Communications customers about it NOT successfully offering support for Microsoft Windows 7:
"Cisco will have no liability for any delay in delivery, or failure to deliver, any or all of the planned Windows 7 support features set forth herein. Therefore, any such delay or failure will not in any way grant to Cisco customers the right to return, refund, adjust, or exchange any previously purchased Cisco products or products that customers may purchase under their Cisco purchase contracts."
Are you "rolling the dice" by deploying Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit) while purchasing the following Cisco UC products? Read more
The New York Times is reporting that Skype's cofounders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis will become significant owners of the investment group buying a 65% interest in Skype from eBay for approximately $1.9 billion in cash (which values Skype at $2.75 billion).
Simultaneously, it now appears Mike Volpi is being kicked to the curb by the very same investment group he organized to purchase Skype from eBay!
In a fascinating development, copies of Mike Volpi's email messages that appeared within legal litigation exhibits (page 6), reveal he had absolutely no problem stepping on the toes of his former employer, Cisco Systems (which is quite interesting because Volpi was considered by many to be the most likely Cisco executive to succeed John Chambers as Cisco's CEO). Read more
Cisco CEO John Chambers was recently named one of America's Best Leaders, today however, The New York Times in a scathing article (at least in my opinion), is questioning whether Cisco shareholders will ever see a return on their investment.
According to the Times story:
Breakingviews.com correspondent - Robert Cyran criticized the eternal ebullience of Chambers:
"Mr. Chambers, who once claimed Cisco could increase sales by 50 percent a year over the long run. They’ve since grown 7 percent annually."
Cyran then lashed out at Chambers' management reorganization:
"Cisco has 59 standing boards and councils. This seems like a recipe for endless meetings, management confusion and reduced accountability."
Read more
Today George Morton - Dual CCIE #18532 Routing and Switching/Security, provided his analysis of Cisco's new worldwide CCIE count:
"I'm always surprised when Cisco announces the CCIE numbers. There's no rhyme nor reason that I can understand as to when they publish the numbers. The interesting thing is that this report shows about one month of activity and the big news is China.
"Since the last report about 32 days ago, China has had a decrease in its total number of CCIEs. Now it's important to remember if 5 pass and 6 are decertified then the net new CCIE number for the report is -1. In this monthly report the net new CCIE number for China is -9. With China leading the way for so many years this is a major shift." Read more
Last week, Avian Securities Senior Telecom Research Analyst - Catharine Trebnick said in her research note:
"In the Carrier Ethernet segment, the market is extremely competitive and according to our industry sources, pricing is in free fall. Operators are selling IPVPN with Cisco pricing at the high end and /or Adtran pricing at the low end and are keeping Juniper routers just where they are in the network, close to the core.
"This dynamic changes our original thesis, that the Juniper MX Ethernet switch would gain traction in some accounts as operators retired their CSCO Catalyst switches. In addition, our industry contacts have indicated that Cisco is pushing their ASR 9000 at very competitive prices." Read more
As a selection committee member for America's Best Leaders, Michael Useem - Professor of Management and Director of the Center for Leadership and Change Management at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (whom by the way has also personally presented programs and seminars on leadership and change to Cisco Systems), appears to of had a hand in choosing Cisco CEO John Chambers for the honor of being named one of:
According to an America's Best profile written by Useem regarding Chambers' leadership success:
When AIG, Citi, and General Motors went into tailspins after the financial bubble burst in 2008, they abruptly changed leadership. But Cisco did not, and now in his 14th year as CEO—twice the norm for large companies—Chambers has led one of the biggest comebacks of modern times.
Read more
Earlier this month, network troubleshooting and analysis solutions vendor - Network Instruments, announced GigaStor NetFlow Agent, which according to Network Instruments:
"Allows engineers to utilize NetFlow data about any device in any environment. GigaStor captures and converts packets into NetFlow data flows, pushing it out to multiple destinations simultaneously. This is especially valuable for Network Behavior Anomaly Detection (NBAD) and compliance monitoring applications."
In the Q & A below, Douglas Smith - Cofounder and President of Network Instruments, discusses the key limitations of Cisco NetFlow as well as the benefits of his new GigaStor NetFlow Agent:
1. So what are key Cisco NetFlow limitations?
| Douglas Smith: | There are several limitations that can prevent the use of NetFlow as a performance monitoring technology across an entire network. For companies using NetFlow-dependent reporting applications for NBAD, security, compliance or performance management, these limitations severely limit visibility to portions of the network. |
Four examples of limitations that can prevent the use of NetFlow as a performance monitoring technology: Read more
The new Cisco ISR G2 portfolio is priced as follows: Read more
Norwegian news is reporting that Tandberg management received financial incentives directly from Cisco in order to favorably promote Cisco's acquisition offer to Tandberg shareholders (apparently before Cisco's offer to buy Tandberg was made public):
"Before Cisco was bidding for Tandberg, had the U.S. IT giant has already signed a bonus contract with the CEO Fredrik Halvorsen, and eight other leaders in video conferencing company, newspaper Dagens Næringsliv."
It now appears that some Tandberg shareholders are none too pleased!
Furthermore, the below Q & A with Mark Roberts - Polycom vice president of partner marketing, reveals that Polycom believes its channel partners are the "actual winners" in Cisco's acquisition of Tandberg:
1. How will the Cisco/Tandberg combination affect Polycom partners? Read more
| Mark Roberts: | Polycom becomes the only independent provider of collaboration solutions with global scale. This is a huge benefit for our partners because they can now sell Polycom solutions to customers who rely on Avaya, BroadSoft, HP, IBM, Microsoft and Siemens for their UC solution. In fact, Tandberg will be tied solely to Cisco’s call management platform, representing only 11 percent of the global call management market, opening up a significant opportunity for Polycom channel partners to sell into. |
28-year-old Jennifer Leigh Harmon Easevoli bragged on Classmates.com:
"For those of you who knew me and doubted me - I made it, and I made it big.
"I am bigger and better than you thought I could be.
"I am more successful than I could have dreamed and I have had a great time all the while." Read more
VoiceCon Wireless and Mobility track planner - Michael Finneran, seems none too impressed with Cisco's definitive agreement to acquire Starent Networks in his recent No Jitter post:
Cisco Acquires Starent; No Movement on "Motion"
Finneran was particularly harsh on Cisco Motion, saying that since its launch back in May 2008, Cisco Motion architecture has been devalued to "marketecture."
However, it certainly appeared to me that Finneran was really venting his pent-up frustration at Cisco's much ballyhooed new management structure:
"Watching Cisco, you get the feeling that they have so many things going on that nothing is getting done. Certainly we don't see much meaningful collaboration between the WLAN and UC groups, and outside of rah-rah talks from Mr. Chambers, wireless is a disconnect."
Read more
BusinessWeek reported last week that data center networking switch vendor - Arista Networks, is taking direct aim at the data center market share of Cisco Systems:
Gunning for an Elephant in Silicon Valley
Why is the data center market share of cute adorable Cisco at risk?
Well, according to BusinessWeek:
Arista's switches, computers that direct traffic around the Net, are less than half the price of comparable Cisco products. Lane Patterson - chief technology officer of data center company Equinix, says Arista's equipment can be one fifth the cost, "a phenomenally compelling price." Its gear also runs on cutting-edge software that analysts say has advantages over Cisco's 20-year-old software, IOS. Arista's software has the potential to run more kinds of programs and won't crash if one gets a bug. Read more
Earlier this week I blogged that a Cisco purchase of Tandberg will create a financial disaster for Tandberg channel partners.
Then only 2 days later, consultation and collaboration platform provider - Gerson Lehrman Group, published:
"The complexity of the technology, the longer sales cycle and the economics of selling video are not compatible with the CISCO go to market model. Serious channel conflict between the exisitng CISCO channels and those used by Tandberg together with a different set of expectations will almost certainly drive the all important video resellers closer to Polycom."
I believe Tandberg channel partners will stampede to join the Polycom partner program.
Obviously sensing the channel conflict, more than a week ago, Cisco tried to paint a rosy picture for Tandberg channel partners under new Cisco ownership.
Nevertheless, I still don't buy it, why?
Well, in the video below that discusses new video opportunities for both Tandberg and Cisco channel partners, at approximately the 4:25 time mark, Cisco CEO John Chambers insincerely (at least in my opinion), shook the hand of Tandberg CEO Fredrik Halvorsen: Read more
Earlier this week All About Nortel blogger - Mark Evans revealed a press release snafu that appears to have burned $2 million per day of Nortel creditor cash ($6 million per day of "value burned" when factoring in shares to be issued by Ciena to Nortel creditors).
How so you may ask?
Well, Evans presented evidence of a Ciena press release issued on Friday, October 2 (but quickly withdrawn).
Ciena's October 2, 2009 Press Release That Was Withdrawn:
According Evan's blog story:
"Here’s the press release that Ciena apparently released last Friday to discuss its purchase of most of Nortel’s optical and Ethernet assets. The press release was quickly pulled, and replaced with another one that Ciena was in discussions with Nortel."
Fast-forward 5 days to Wednesday, October 7:
Ciena released a new press release that shaved $10 million in Nortel creditor cash ($30 million of "value burned" when factoring in shares to be issued by Ciena to Nortel creditors).
Ciena's New October 7, 2009 Press Release: Read more
Cisco's most recent Form 10-K (page 21) filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, seems to alarmingly warn investors:
The products and technologies that we identify as "emerging technologies," such as Cisco TelePresence systems, or "advanced technologies" may not prove to have the market success we anticipate, and we may not successfully identify and invest in other emerging or advanced technologies.
For financial reporting purposes, Cisco lumps its TelePresence products under Other Products. And interestingly enough, it was Cisco's Other Products which experienced the greatest percentage drop in sales (-26.1%) for Cisco's fiscal year 2009.
Cisco Net Product Sales by Groups of Similar Products (page 19) Read more
Cisco IP SLA has been embedded in most Cisco switches and routers for the past decade.
Many network admins and managers are aware of it, but may find it difficult or impossible to use.
The below Q & A with Josh Stephens - VP and Head Geek of network management software vendor - SolarWinds, talks about Cisco's IP SLA and new software that according to Solarwinds makes IP SLA easy to use:
1. Why aren’t more people using Cisco's IP SLA and what common questions do you often hear about it? Read more
| Josh Stephens: | Cisco IP SLA technology has been available on almost all business-class Cisco routers and switches for quite some time. That means that most people already have IP SLA technology in their network environment. The challenge has really been around how to best access and use IP SLA. So there are a couple of key reasons that more people haven’t adopted IP SLA. First, IP SLA operations have traditionally required the use of CLIs (command line interfaces) to configure and maintain – which is just difficult and overly time-consuming. Additionally, native IP SLA data results are hard to use and understand, particularly across multiple devices and network protocols. We designed Orion IP SLA Manager to make IP SLA more accessible and usable day-to-day by addressing these two issues. The most common questions we hear about Cisco IP SLA are which devices support it and how does it differ from NetFlow. |
Two months ago, I blogged that Juniper was promoting vouchers offering 100% off its certification exams until the end of 2009. Well, Juniper is now advising that its ending the 100% off promotion on October 9, 2009.
So why is Juniper ending the promotion so early?
It's my understanding the promotion has been too successful, too quickly!
Perhaps having too many Cisco certified engineers becoming newly certified on Juniper is too costly.
Now we know why Cisco's the leader in networking, its competitors are milquetoasts! Read more
George Morton - Dual CCIE #18532 Routing and Switching/Security, gives a revealing 10 year historical perspective on Cisco's worlwide CCIE count:
"Just looking at these numbers is fun. From July 2000 until September 2009 the total number of certified CCIEs has grown by 15,694. That averages around 1,743 per year and over the past nine years it's been pretty consistent.
"The big changes that occurred in 2009?
"R/S and Voice Labs both added an essay section to their lab tests. Security went to version 3, and R/S is going to version 4.
"I like to look at my CCIE Number from August 2007 - CCIE# 18532, and match it to the current passing candidate's number (CCIE# 25514), and then by using the annual CCIE count, figure how many CCIEs dropped out of the Cisco Certified CCIE Program. Over the most recent 2 years, an average of 667 CCIEs dropped out per year:
"(25514 - 18532) - (20,690 - 15062) / 2 = 677"
10 Year Historical CCIE Count (view chart in full-size) Read more
Today George Morton - Dual CCIE #18532 Routing and Switching/Security, provided his detailed analysis of Cisco's new worldwide CCIE count:
"Well, it's that time again when Cisco releases their CCIE numbers. The last time was in June when the total CCIE count went over 20,000 for the first time.
"This is the first of two blog stories on the CCIE count. The second will be the annual CCIE number count that covers from July 31, 2000 to this most recent count. It's always interesting to see the changes over time in the give and take of each of the certificates, so please look for the second blog story with the nine year history of CCIEs.
"The big news this month is CCIE Security, net new ZERO. Back on April 20 of this year the CCIE Security Lab changed. We know the change was big, but I had no idea how big until now. In the May ’09 to June ‘09 report, only one new Security CCIE was added to the total CCIE count.
"In this three month period the new CCIE Security count is zero! With about ten available seats on any given day over the past three months, that equals about 600 available seats for Security and the net change in the certification was zero. That is one very hard seat.
"The big changes in the Security Lab included the dropping of the VPN-3000, PIX, 3550 for the 3650, upgrading the routers to ISR’s, upgrading the IOS 12.2 to 12.4T, upgrading the IPS software from 5 to 6. On the face of it dropping the VPN-3000 should have made things easier, losing the 26xx series and 12.2 would not break the bank.
"So what changed? I am guessing a few items, in the last few years Cisco has been reevaluating the tests. I am guessing that Security was first on the list, and they went big. New IOS router security features is another, more on securing the Lab, more secure test taking policies, all taking their toll on count. Another answer might just be that some people are moving to Service Provider if they want a second CCIE number.
"Again, in the area of multiple CCIEs, Security is the news with a drop of multiple CCIEs in Router & Switch + Security. In all of the reports that I have seen since 2004 when multiple CCIEs were first reported, I have never, never seen this; a drop in the total count of any multiple CCIE program. In this report we have two drops, R/S + Security and R/S + Storage. The number of candidates that now have two or more CCIEs went up 90 over the past three months. The big winner has been the Service Provider track with 62. Also, the number of Triples + is up by 21 over the past 3 months." Read more
Brad Reese cofounded BradReese.Com Cisco Refurbished, which enables affordable networks globally by assuring customer satisfaction with guaranteed one year warranties on both Cisco Repair as well as Refurbished Cisco.
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