Cisco

Cisco Systems said it will pay $150 million for a small stake in a virtualization software company called VMware, which operates as a unit of storage giant EMC.

Cisco's stake in the company will be about 1.6 percent. VMware is the leader in what is turning out to be a hot market. The division makes software that allows a computer or server to function as if it were several. The software emulates features of a computer, which makes it easier to run multiple operating systems and applications on a single machine. Companies benefit because the software allows them … Read more

So much for the theory iPhone designers were North Carolina fans. Cisco and Duke University are now absolving the iPhone of any blame for wireless network outages at the school, as was earlier alleged, but they aren't saying exactly what caused the problems.

In a news report earlier this week, a Duke official directly implicated the iPhone for causing network issues that knocked out parts of Duke's wireless network. But Duke spokeswoman Tracy Futhey, in a statement Friday on the school's Web site, said: "The reality is that a particular set of conditions made the Duke … Read more

Were the iPhone designers North Carolina fans?

Network World is reporting that Duke University's Wi-Fi network is suffering from what appear to be rogue iPhones. Duke's Kevin Miller told Network World that the iPhone's Wi-Fi chips are flooding the university's Cisco access points with requests for MAC (Media Access Control) addresses. This is apparently knocking out dozens of access points as the 150 iPhones on campus wander around between different hotspots.

It seems a bit weird to me. No other reports of trouble with iPhones and Wi-Fi networks have surfaced, though of course it's very … Read more

As we head into the dog days of summer, most technology announcements are lukewarm at best. Usually vendors save their juicy stuff for September and the push toward the end of the year.

With that as a back drop, one announcement last week may have been a curious exception to this rule. Cisco, EMC, and Microsoft got together with a few others and announced the Secure Information Sharing Architecture (SISA). What is SISA? The press release defines it as a "commercial off-the-shelf architecture that was created to make data easily, and securely shared among multinational environments."

Pretty vague, … Read more

Editor's note: This story was updated at 2:51 p.m. PDT to clear up confusion between DomainKeys, a standard already in use, and DomainKeys Identified Mail, the up-and-coming technique to which some are now migrating.

WASHINGTON--A new antispam technology that recently got a preliminary nod from an international standards body holds promise, but an engineer who helped develop the technique says it's not a surefire way to evade e-mails from criminals.

The technique called DomainKeys Identified Mail, or DKIM for short, relies on a quietly inserted digital signature on the sender's end, which is designed to … Read more

In this seventh installment of the Open Source CEO Series, I talked with Kelly Herrell, CEO of Vyatta, the open source network software company (router and firewall).

I first bumped into Kelly back in 1998 when my employer (Mitsui Comtek, the high-tech subsidiary of Mitsui & Co.) invested in Cobalt Microsystems (Linux microserver company acquired by Sun for $2.1 billion). I bumped into him again years later when he was running operations and strategy for Monta Vista, an embedded Linux pioneer.

Kelly is one of those people that you respect even when he's kicking your tail (as was the case at Monta Vista - I was at rival Lineo). Once known for being "the world's best-dressed Linux backer" [Correction: I inadvertently linked to an article on Peder Ulander, who dresses much better than Kelly, though I do have to say the first time I met Kelly he was wearing a green shirt and matching green shoes :-) ], Kelly's reputation is now right where it should be: a tier-one open source executive.… Read more

CHICAGO--Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers disagrees with BusinessWeek's recent article that claims the telecommunications industry has risen from the dead.

In Chambers' view, the telecom market is simply entering the second phase of its life cycle--a cycle he claims to have envisioned some 15 years ago when Cisco pledged to change the way people work, live and play.

"BusinessWeek got it wrong," he said. "Telecom is not back from the dead. It's merely in phase 2 of its development. In this second phase, collaboration or sharing with a large group will change the service model … Read more

IBM and Cisco Systems are sitting down at the table again. And this time the table is bigger.

The two technology behemoths are expanding their near-decade-old alliance, enhancing the focus on telecom carriers and their customers. As part of the expanded alliance, announced Thursday, the duo will offer a centralized service to identify, manage and reroute network traffic when trouble arises.

Cisco will combine its Network Management Platform with IBM's Tivoli Software for Service Assurance and Fault Management. That, in essence, strives to help carriers manage IP-based services and reduce implementation and maintenance costs.

Next month, Cisco plans to … Read more

From ZDNet:

At the Interop conference in Las Vegas, Cisco CEO John Chambers talks about the need for businesses to increase productivity by implementing Web 2.0 tools such as wikis, mashups, and virtual conferencing. He also explains how Cisco used Web 2.0 principles in its $7 billion acquisition of Scientific Atlanta.