Cisco

Cisco Systems has invested in a peer-to-peer Internet TV start-up.

The Seattle-based start-up GridNetworks said that Cisco is one of two "strategic investors" that contributed to the company's $9.5 million series A round of funding announced in October. The venture capital firm Panorama Capital of Menlo Park, Calif., was named as the lead investor when the funding was first announced.

GridNetworks, which launched its service in November 2006, has taken a hybrid approach to delivering high-definition movies and TV shows over the Internet. It uses both peer-to-peer technology, which leverages content distributed on users' computers all … Read more

The WSJ reports on a (supposedly) growing trend of people looking for more stable (call them old-school) companies as opposed to start-ups.

The story cites the fact that IPOs are down and that getting to a public offering is taking much longer than it did in the 2000-era where you could basically get an office and file to go public. But that was never scalable and in fact contributed to serious economic confusion--especially here in the valley.

I believe that today's startups are much better managed than the companies that were being built in early 2000 or so. The … Read more

Maybe it's that West Virginia drawl. But for some reason, the financial movers and shakers on Wall Street need an interpreter each time Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers begins to talk.

On Tuesday, investors became euphoric after Chambers repeated his earlier forecast for Cisco's long-term growth rate.

In case you missed it, these same folks nearly jumped out the window when Chambers said the exact thing February 6 after Cisco reported its fiscal third quarter.

The big "news" on Tuesday is that Cisco's chief, appearing at the Morgan Stanley Tech Conference, said he was "… Read more

This weekend's NY Times article "Maybe Microsoft Should Stalk Different Prey" raises the point that perhaps Microsoft should reconsider the Yahoo acquisition to focus on what it knows, which is enterprise software.

New CNET Editor-in-Chief Dan Farber raises a different point in a post today--that there is still time for an internet land-grab and Microsoft should take this opportunity to nab Yahoo before it's too late.

Overall, I don't see the Yahoo acquisition paying immediate dividends. In fact, it's hard to see when it would pay off. Microsoft doesn't have the machine … Read more

Cisco Systems' new market is urban management.

The router and switch kings are teaming up with cities like Seoul, Lisbon, Madrid, San Francisco and Hamburg, Germany, on energy efficiency experiments. It will then take the successful ones and export them around the world.

In San Francisco, for instance, Cisco has rigged up a municipal bus with wireless Internet access so commuters can get their e-mail, browse the Web, or get information on when their connecting bus or train is coming in. The idea is to make public transportation more attractive and popular, which in turn reduces carbon dioxide emissions by … Read more

John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems, is one of the least controversial CEOs in the tech world. Unlike Craig Barrett (former Intel CEO) or Cypress Semiconductor's T.J. Rodgers, he doesn't generally take potshots at Washington politicians. Cisco provides its opinion on issues like immigration, open access, and foreign competition, but the company rarely insists on playing the leading role in these controversies.

Chambers even wisely plays both sides in campaign contributions. He's donating to John McCain's presidential campaign, but also gave to Senator Harry Reid and the Democratic National Party, among others, according to this … Read more

WASHINGTON--Two security researchers at ShmooCon demonstrated on Saturday how a laptop connected to a VoIP telephone could, in some cases, expose a business' internal network to outsiders.

John Kindervag, senior security architect for Vigilar, said that public waiting areas in hospitals, conference rooms, and hotel rooms are particularly vulnerable to this attack since often there is no IT staff around. Appearing on stage at the East Coast computer hacker conference with Kindervag was Jason Ostrom, manager of Vigilar's Vulnerability Assessment and Compliance Practice team, who used the ShmooCon conference to show off his latest version of VoIP Hopper, a … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--Mobility means different things to different companies. For Cisco Systems, it means more than just taking your handset or MP3 on the go.

It's about connecting any device to any network from anywhere at anytime.

"This will be the next phase of the Internet," Cisco CEO John Chambers said at an event on Monday previewing a keynote address he will be giving Tuesday morning at the GSMA's Mobile World Congress here. This is the first time ever that Cisco, the leading supplier of IP infrastructure equipment in the world, is addressing the cell phone industry … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--Cisco Systems' CEO John Chambers gave a little more color Monday to comments he made last week regarding a slowdown in IT spending.

Chambers, speaking at a preview event at the Mobile World Congress ahead of his keynote speech Tuesday, told analysts and reporters that the company only started seeing a slowdown in customer orders of its networking products in January, the last month of the second quarter of Cisco's fiscal year 2008. He also said that the current blip in orders is not as bad as previous downturns, most notably the major telecom bust of 2001.

"… Read more