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CCIE water cooler gossip: USA tops in October worldwide CCIE count

Brad Reese — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 03:35:41 -0400

What a difference a month can make. For example, just last month 100% of the world's CCIE growth occurred outside the USA. However this month the red, white and blue came out on top by capturing 21% of the growth with 51 CCIEs: 5,076 - 5,025 Comparing October 2008 vs. September 2008, the CCIE count increased 244: 18,084 - 17,840 Canada grew by 10 while Mexico added 3 CCIEs. Once more the regional champ, the Pacific Rim grew the most, 48% with 118 CCIEs: 7,042 - 6,924 India grew by 30 CCIEs claiming 12% of total growth: 472 - 442 Showing strong results, China plus Hong Kong grew by 35 CCIEs claiming 14% of total growth: 3,041 - 3,008 While the Middle East grew by 10 CCIEs for 4% of the total: 453 - 443 Furthermore, Europe grew by 30 CCIEs for 12% of the total: 4,052 - 4,022 Net new CCIEs as a percent of new CCIEs:

	Router/Switch	68%
	Security	26%
	Service Provider	18%
	Voice	8%
	Storage	2%

Percent of new CCIEs by region:

	Pacific Rim	48%
	Americas	32%
	EMEA	18%

Ranking of new CCIEs month over month by country:

1.	USA	51
2.	PR China + HK	35
3.	India	30
4.	Korea	28
5.	Russia	14
6.	Australia	12
7.	Brazil	12
8.	Canada	10

Comparison of the September 2008 vs. October 2008 Worldwide CCIE Counts: View more:

	CCIE water cooler gossip
	Nine year worldwide CCIE count
	Cisco CCIEs are globally at your fingertips

Why do you think the USA grew its CCIE count?

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Economies of Virtualization

Martha Young — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:54:05 -0400

As the global economy tanks we have to wonder just how far away we are from seeing signs of a turnaround. Everyone is scrutinizing their personal situation, evaluating job security, debt load, and savings. If we keep in mind that market chaos is an opportunity for massive changes in the business, the net result can be extremely positive.

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Cisco CEO John Chambers and Presidential Candidate John McCain: Connecting the dots...

Brad Reese — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:53:06 -0400

Am intrigued that the highly successful CEO of Cisco - John Chambers, is such an ardent supporter of presidential candidate John McCain. So I've decided to try and connect the dots... between McCain and Chambers and hopefully understand why Chambers seeks to help elect John McCain as President of the United States. The following strictly represents the views and opinion of yours truly and does not represent those of Network World nor the Cisco Subnet: Chambers is a strong financial supporter of John McCain's presidential campaign as well as other Republican and even a few Democrat nominees, and over the years he has personally contributed $1,331,191 to political/special interest campaigns. Furthermore, Chambers holds the unique distinction of being both a National Campaign Co-Chair and a National Finance Committee Co-Chair of McCain's presidential campaign. And perhaps most interestingly, in a new McCain administration Chambers appears to be on the "short list" of possible Treasury Secretaries. Such an appointment would put Chambers in total control of the business world, with unprecedented power to spend $700 billion of U.S. Taxpayer money at his discretion. So lets try and connect the dots... First Dot The Senate Commerce Committee is in charge of all Senate matters related to Telecommunications as well as Broadband Policy: Telecommunications has become such an important issue that the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Communications was discontinued in favor of Full Senate Commerce Committee hearings. John McCain is a current member of the Senate Commerce Committee. Additionally, McCain has served as Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee three times, between the years 1997-2001 as well as between 2003-2005. Since its debut in 2003, The Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital Conference created by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, has been promoting informal but pointed conversations about how digital technology will impact us now and in the future. At the D5 Conference in May 2007, Senator John McCain was interviewed revealing:

6:58 p.m.: Sen. McCain suggests that there should be as little government regulation of broadband as possible. Walt notes that the telecom industry is re-aggregating back into "one unified AT&T."

It could be argued that AT&T is simultaneously both the largest user of Cisco equipment (i.e. a customer) as well as the largest reseller of Cisco equipment and services.

Sen. McCain says we should let the market and technology solve the Net-neutrality issue: "When you control the pipe you should be able to get profit from your investment."

Coincidentally, the following sums up the Cisco Net-neutrality Position: "Regulate Only if Problems Occur, Not Before" It dovetails quite nicely with Senator McCain's Net-neutrality position mentioned earlier above. Also auspiciously, former FCC Chairman Michael Powell was appointed to the Cisco Board of Directors.

7:10 p.m.: Whoa. Impromptu job interview. Sen. McCain says given the chance, he'd hire John Chambers for his cabinet.

Second Dot McCain Town Hall Meeting in Philadelphia, PA on June 11th, 2008: At approximately the "2:40 time mark" in the McCain Philadelphia Town Hall Meeting video below, McCain invoked the name of John Chambers as well as that of Cisco in order to advocate McCain's position that corporate taxes should be lowered substantially: In the above video, McCain used John Chambers and Cisco as his example in order to pontificate that American companies paid the second highest corporate tax rate in the world (behind Japan according to McCain) of 35%, and that America should reduce its corporate tax rate to 25% if Americans wanted to keep jobs in the U.S. from going overseas. Alarmingly, only 45 days later on July 26th, Cisco reported paying a corporate tax rate of only 21.5% for its entire 2008 fiscal year. Cisco paid $1.386 billion less in corporate taxes then what John McCain implied to American voters that Cisco would be paying! Cisco even paid less in corporate tax (21.5%) than what John McCain proposed as his reduced corporate tax rate target amount (25%). View corporate tax rates around the world. Third Dot H-1B Visa Question asked in Santa Ana, California back in March, 2008: At approximately the ":34 time mark" in the video below, Senator McCain confirmed that he supports increases in H-1B Visas.
In Spring 2008 John Chambers stated:

"I think we're still job-constrained in terms of IT talent, whether it's in this country or around the world. It's something I would like to see us be more aggressive on in terms of our immigration policy for people with college degrees, especially in high-tech that we expand the H-1B status capability, because each person that we bring to this country to put in engineering and high-tech generates two to three other jobs in my company, a good three to five jobs in the local economy ... Having said that, we're going to go wherever the talent is in the world, not as a labor arbitrage play but it is a focus on the war for talent and getting the best and the brightest around the world be a part of Cisco which we are clearly trying to do."

In April 2008, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security invoked a highy unusual and rare ruling to assist Cisco with H-1B Visas. Additionally, a May 2008 study unmasked that Cisco was not using the H-1B visa program to hire the best and brightest. Finally last summer, Cisco's immigration law firm was audited for suspected improper behavior by the U.S. Department of Labor.

What dots... can you add to connect Chambers and McCain?

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Skype for Asterisk Yields Unparalled Innovation

Matthew Nickasch — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:11:44 -0400

Just last week, Digium announced a partnership with Skype yielding the new "Skype for Asterisk" beta. This exciting announcement came from the annual Digium Asterisk conference, Astricon 2008, in Phoenix Arizona.

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Password Reminder PRO: takes the pain out of password expiration

Ron Barrett — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 12:52:41 -0400

One of the unpleasant truths of being a network administrator is that when the time comes for a password to be reset, the little pop up reminder in Windows is not enough. Most users ignore the warnings until…well until you drag yourself in one morning ( and without fail it will happen on a morning you have to drag yourself in) and find that 30- 40% of the firm is locked out of the network.

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Could Nortel benefit from Cisco's learning curve?

Brad Reese — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 00:05:19 -0400

Cisco middle-upper management are the biggest barrier to change as the company undergoes a process of continuous improvement, according to a story that appeared yesterday in The Star, Malaysia's most widely-read English-language daily. In the story, headlined "Firms need to re-engineer their core business to stay afloat," writer Suraj Raj cites Randy Pond - Cisco Executive Vice President of Operations Processes and Systems as saying that companies that have survived the long haul had implemented a process of continuous improvement.

The story cites Pond, who is leading a comprehensive business transformation across Cisco, as saying that change was difficult to implement - especially among the employees. According to the story: "While employees at the grassroot level were upbeat about the transformation process, Pond said Cisco failed to recognise that it was the middle-upper management that was the biggest barriers to change." Pond is quoted as saying: "We are now measuring our leadership team on whether they are embracing change at the speed that meets business needs."

According to the story in The Star, Cisco started its transformation program without external stimulus, such as pressure from the market or economy. Pond said such stimulus would "stir passion around it so that we can move employees the way we want them to go." When contacted by yours truly regarding the accuracy of The Star's story, a Cisco spokesperson said he believed the 5 direct quotes attributed to Pond were accurate. However, Cisco added that the editorial content and conclusions drawn by the story's author were open to interpretation. The story is timely given the massive drop in Nortel's market cap. Perhaps Nortel should have taken a feather from Cisco's cap and reengineered its core business even before its troubles began. Last Friday, Nortel CTO John Roese outlined the new focus at Nortel:

	"Our decision to divest the MEN business is an outcome of a process that has been going on for the last two years to determine where this company can best compete and where the greatest opportunities lie. Although we've clearly tried to make all of our businesses successful, it has become increasingly clear in today's economic environment that it is no longer practical to pursue that strategy. We need to choose a focused and prioritized set of markets and technologies in order to de-risk our opportunities to grow."
	"Although we have great technology in MEN – world-leading technology, in fact – the reality is that our optical business is a very different one than most of Nortel's other businesses. As an infrastructure business, its operating model (including processes, value proposition, and focus on "heavy iron") differs significantly from the operating model of the rest of Nortel. Moreover, we expect these models to diverge even more in the next several years, which would add further complexity to our overall operations."
	"While the decision to divest MEN was not an easy one (particularly given its technology leadership and its extremely talented workforce), it is the right one if our goal is to focus the company on a more specific set of high-growth, solutions-oriented, next-generation experiences – such as next-generation carrier and next-generation enterprise."
	"The intent to divest MEN is also not out of alignment with what we've been saying for the past two years – specifically, that the future of this company is around solutions, is more about software than hardware, and is more around value to the end-user, with a higher level of interaction with customers. For the last two years at least, including at our Financial Analyst events (the most recent which was in June this year), we have be talking about this strategy."

Roese added: "Nortel has been through these changes before and has continually and successfully reinvented itself. In fact, in the early 1900s, Nortel was the world's largest manufacturer of sleigh bells of all things." Related stories: Blogger warns: "Nortel doesn't make it out alive" Once north of $300B, Nortel's stock market capitalization plummets under $1B Is Cisco the Madonna of networking?

Is there much that Nortel can learn from Cisco's business transformation?

http://www.BradReese.Com Search 31,745 Cisco Job Openings Post Cisco Network Engineer Jobs View 1,585 items of Refurbished Cisco Examine CCIE Resumes Consider 703 Cisco Certified Network Engineer Resumes

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Managing IP Telephony with 3rd Party Tools Also Saves Money

David Shephard of NetIQ — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 11:25:12 -0400

Nice piece Robin we certainly see this in the market. I would also like to add a comment based on some Nemertes market analysis. Basically that without IP Telephony management tools cost to operate a unit/year is $1,262, with specialty IP telephony management tools, like those from the vendors you list, spend drops to only $113.

Once north of $300B, Nortel's stock market capitalization plummets under $1B

Brad Reese — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 03:12:53 -0400

As a casualty of Wall Street's ongoing turmoil, Nortel stock lost 10% of its value by the closing sound of today's trading bell. Additionally, RBC Capital Markets Managing Director Mark Sue downgraded his Nortel stock rating from Sector Perform to Underperform and when combined they both helped thrust Nortel's stock market capitalization under $1 billion.

In the opinion of yours truly, for a company that had once single-handedly accounted for more than a third of the total valuation of all companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX), this has been a "gargantuan fall from grace." To add further perspective to the scale of this decline, the Nortel stock market capitalization on March 27th, 2000 stood north of $300 billion. Nortel (NT) stock chart for the past 28 years:

View the full NT chart at Wikinvest

In his downgrade note, Sue highlighted the following challenges facing Nortel:

	"Fighting in wireless and attempting to grab a substantive share of 4G (also known as Beyond 3G, an abbreviation for Fourth-Generation) may prove to be challenging for Nortel considering its subscale market position."
	"Further deterioration in the CDMA market (code division multiple access - CDMA is a channel access method utilized by various radio communication technologies) may also put margin pressures on the company, according to our calculations."
	"We're taking a wait-and-see approach when it comes to the enterprise and whether or not Nortel may be able wrestle meaningful market share away from Cisco. The challenge is that HP ProCurve, Juniper Networks and Brocade and others all want to lay claims to the #2 position for corporate networking."
	"A deteriorating balance sheet is not helping and Nortel has been free cash flow negative thus far in 2008 (and in 7 out of the previous 10 quarters). The company has cash of $3.1B but it's also saddled with substantial debt of $4.5B. In addition, we expect Nortel to burn another $500M in 3Q08."
	"Nortel has decided to sell some assets (Metro Ethernet), but the timing likely couldn't have been any worse considering the challenged status of most potential bidders."
	"It is our view that credit turbulence, a potential economic slowdown overseas, and extra carrier spending scrutiny may create difficult headwinds for the company in executing its turnaround plans."

Is there a lesson for Cisco in Nortel's gargantuan fall from grace?

http://www.BradReese.Com Search 29,972 Cisco Job Openings Post Cisco Network Engineer Jobs View 1,596 items of Refurbished Cisco Examine CCIE Resumes Consider 703 Cisco Certified Network Engineer Resumes

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Mitchell Ashley — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 02:24:52 -0400

Despite Microsoft's best efforts, Windows XP is the operating system that just won't seem to go away. Seems as sticky as DOS 3.3 was back in the day. Microsoft's officially cut ties with selling new copies of XP but PC manufactures can still downgrade new Vista PCs to Windows XP until June of 2009. Microsoft just extended that date from January 2009 until June 2009.

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GenY and 21st Century Business Models

Martha Young — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 01:14:10 -0400

Last week I pointed out the Employee Evolution web site; an on-line community and career center site aimed at Gen-Y, also known as the Millennial generation. An author at the site had developed a Top 10 list on how this up and coming group would change the way we work and play.

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