The Sunday edition of The New York Times reported that Cisco has 50 executives scouring the globe for technology acquisitions.
They work closely with leaders of internal Cisco product teams.
Just as the general manager of a baseball team might fill a gap in his lineup by acquiring a new center fielder or relief pitcher, Cisco’s business managers can ask for specific technology help from outside the company.
In 2005, in response to such a plea, Cisco bought a California start-up Nemo Systems - for $12 million.
Nemo had designed a novel way of using standard memory chips to store data in Cisco’s routers, which needed more costly specialized memory.
Cisco has spent nearly three years refining Nemo’s approach; the memory technique will begin showing up in Cisco routers this year.
 Regarding the rise of engineering in China and India, Ned Hooper - Senior Vice President for Corporate Business Development at Cisco stated: |
"We haven’t acquired any technologies from these countries yet, but we have full-time people looking, and it is only a matter of time before we do."
"There are always people lined up outside my office offering technologies, but often they are not the ones you want to buy."
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The bigger they are ...
Quote from story: "Cisco has spent nearly three years refining Nemo’s approach; the memory technique will begin showing up in Cisco routers this year."
Sigh...
Any company (even Cisco) that pays (even only) $12 million for an acquisition and then torches off thirty six months(!) to roll that innovation out is seriously out of sync with the product cycle. Ultimately, this sort of lumbering catches up with any company.