Cisco to keep strategy even in case of recession
123990
John Chambers, chief executive of  Cisco Systems Inc  said on Monday the network equipment  maker would not change its business plans even if the U.S.  economy is hit by a recession, as it is focused on long-term  strategy.
171052
Cisco Systems Inc   gave a disappointing outlook on Wednesday and warned  of a rapid slowdown in U.S. and European orders, driving its  shares down 8 percent and adding to broader fears of a U.S.  recession.
653293
A pair of Forrester Research analysts gave CIOs a passel of advice Thursday on how to deal with the possibility of a U.S. economic recession.&quot;We are not predicting a recession, but we think its important for CIOs to be proactive, to get their businesses ready in case there is a recession,&quot; said analyst Andrew Bartels, who conducted the teleconference with colleague Alex Cullen.Their recommendations boiled down to a number of main themes: The right ways to cut costs, to work closely with CFOs, and to plan not only for the lean times but for the good ones that inevitably follow.&quot;Get close to your CFO. You want to be arm in arm with that CFO,&quot; Bartels stressed.Forrester said there is a 55 percent probability the economy will remain essentially stabilized, due to factors including U.S. exports boosted by a weak dollar. The firm projects a 35 percent chance the country will enter a shallow recession, and a 10 percent chance it will fall into a deep one.The analysts said to watch for two key warning signs: Gas prices rising above $4 a gallon and two or more consecutive months of non-farm payroll employment.If they haven&#39;t already, CIOs should prepare now by reviewing their portfolios and identify which projects could be postponed, cut, or cancelled, he said.&quot;If you&#39;re running things well, adapting to recession is easier,&quot; Cullen noted.The tradeoffs vary depending on the type of cut, he said. For example, delaying hardware purchases could result in increased service outages.CIOs could also try other tactics, such as renegotiating vendor pacts or enacting hiring freezes, according to Forrester. Such measures could antagonize business partners and overburden staff, they said.But those types of risks are mild in comparison to that posed by cutting certain types of &quot;low-hanging fruit,&quot; such as time and support for research and development.&quot;These things look like they don&#39;t have immediate payback, so the question is &#39;Why are we doing them when times are tight?&#39;&quot; Cullen said.Likewise, it would be foolish to pull money and resources away from architectural strategy, he argued: &quot;You&#39;re going to be impeding your ability to take a long-term view of IT investments. When the tap opens up again people are going to be creating silos ... and you&#39;re going to spend your time unwinding these things.&quot;&quot;The worst thing you can do as a CIO is get so focused on cuts that when you come out of a recession, your department can&#39;t take the business where it wants to be,&quot; Bartels added.Outsourcing IT may also look like an appealing option, but the analysts issued a stern warning against it as a quick fix.Large-scale outsourcing deals take a long time to close, for one thing, Cullen argued: &quot;This is not near-term savings. This is not 2008 savings.&quot; But outsourcing of a particular IT function could make sense, he said.The hot trend of the past couple of years -- SaaS (software as a service) -- is not necessarily a fitting remedy during a recession, the analysts argued. While SaaS vendors relentlessly tout the cost savings their offerings can provide, it would cost a lot more to rip and replace legacy assets with SaaS products, the analysts said. However, they added, SaaS might offer lower upfront costs for a new technology.
277901
Cisco Systems Inc.'s fiscal first-quarter profits jumped 29 percent as the network equipment giant saw growth in its traditional routing markets as well as its emerging technologies like Internet telephone and home networking gear.
534479
Sub-prime takes the shine from quarter Cisco System profit rose 37 per cent in its first quarter '08, with growth in the networking equipment maker's international segments offsetting a "lumpy" US enterprise market.â¦
317877
Cisco Systems plans to have one-fifth of its top executives in India by 2012, in line with its plan to make India the hub for the development of technologies and new business models for emerging markets.The company expects 60 to 70 percent of its growth to come from emerging markets, John Chambers, the company&#39;s chairman and CEO, said in Bangalore at the inauguration of the company&#39;s Globalisation Centre East campus. The new center will work with partners in the Middle East, Africa, China, Asia, and Latin America on developing technologies for these markets.While emerging markets are growing at between 5 and 10 percent, markets in developed countries are growing at just 1 to 4 percent, according to various estimates, Chambers said.The company&#39;s plan to have senior vice presidents, vice presidents, and directors, cutting across all corporate functions, in India is not aimed at cutting costs, but at nurturing talent in India, said Wim Elfrink, chief globalization officer for Cisco, who also heads the new center.Cisco currently employs about 3,000 staff in India, which it plans to increase to 10,000 by 2010. The new center, which currently has 900 staff, is expected to grow to 3,500 staff by October next year, said Elfrink. Some of the technologies developed in India will be rolled out in other emerging economies, and also in developed countries, he added.Cisco also announced Tuesday a collaboration with Indian outsourcer Satyam Computer Services, of Hyderabad, to focus on software for handling medical distress situations and other health management applications. Cisco plans to take a minority interest in the venture, details of which were not disclosed. Health care is one instance of Cisco&#39;s strategy to use India as base for technology and applications that can be deployed worldwide, Chambers said.The company announced in 2005 that it would&#160;invest $1.1 billion in India&#160;over three years, including $750 million in research and development (R&amp;D), $100 million in customer support, and $100 million in a venture fund. The planned investment is on track, Chambers told reporters in Delhi on Monday.Chambers announced Tuesday that the company was increasing the size of the venture fund by $100 million. The venture fund will be focused on &quot;disruptive technologies,&quot; Chambers said.
647091
There's plenty of good news out there in the technology sector, but nearly five years after the great Nasdaq bust of 2000, bellwether firms like Cisco Systems continue to struggle. -washingtonpost.com
62123
(InfoWorld) - Cisco executives speaking at the ongoing Security Standard Conference claim that the networking giant hasn't sapped innovation in the security companies it has acquired in its efforts to add to its own expanse of IT systems-defense products, while some customers clearly feel otherwise. Taking the stage at the conference in Chicago on Monday to participate in a panel on Cisco's vision for warding off emerging threats and spam, the company's top security executives, and former IronPort Chief Executive Scott Weiss, defended the firm's growth-via-acquisition strategy. Cisco finalized its $830 million buyout of IronPort in June -- only the latest in a long string of such security acquisitions. The company has already begun blending the messaging and malware filtering gateway specialist's technologies into its firewalls, which the executives claim has created a new capability to provide customers with "wide packet inspection," an approach that adds reputation-based anti-attack capabilities to the systems' existing virus and spam detection abilities. Such integration work illustrates the fact that Cisco is improving the ability of its customers to defend their networks from attack and that the firm is serious about innovation and not just attempting to grow its revenues or boost sales of its networking gear by snapping-up other security vendors, Weiss told the assembled audience. Asked by a conference attendee whether major platform providers like Cisco, Microsoft, and IBM will continue to swallow smaller security companies, along with industry giants like Symantec, and how that will impact the availability of the cutting-edge technologies often developed by independent vendors, Weiss said that more consolidation is likely inevitable. Yet he also acknowledged that some niche players will continue to do well on their own. "All the [venture capital] firms that are into small security companies will likely make out like bandits, and there will be a scrum to get the good stuff," said Weiss, who is still heading up IronPort inside Cisco. "Bigger companies will have to decide whether to build, buy, or partner." Weiss highlighted Webroot, the anti-spyware software company that industry watchers have long tabbed for acquisition based on its specialized focus -- and which continues to defy those predictions and grow on its own -- as an example of the type of vendor that will be able to compete in a world where security is being driven further into other broadly-distributed IT platforms, such as Cisco's ubiquitous networking gear. "I think we'll continue to see new Webroots pop-up that can help deal with new threats," he said. "The issue for these companies is how broad is their platform and how to carve a significant portion of the infrastructure out; they have to ask themselves if their technology is broad enough to support a large, profitable company." Along with the benefits of melding together complimentary technologies, such as gateway filtering tools and firewalls, Weiss claims that customers are seeking integrated technologies from single vendors and increasingly looking for "one throat to choke" when selecting security tools. "Users of these technologies want products that talk to each other and have collaborative interfaces," he said. Customers worry about consolidation However, some existing Cisco customers claim that they are troubled by the continued pace of security industry consolidation. Even if Cisco can add many of the pieces that customers seek, it will likely not be able to provide technologies that are as innovative and effective as those made by independent vendors in some areas, said Waqas Akkawi, senior manager of IT security at Sirva, the moving giant that owns Allied Van Lines, Global Van Lines, and North American Van Lines, among other subsidiaries. Akkawi said that Cisco excels in some areas of security where it has experience, namely in network-based tools, but he noted that even some of those products, such as its IDS (intrusion detection systems) and IPS (intrusion prevention systems), also added via various acquisitions, don't measure up to those made by standalone providers. "Cisco is good at what they do naturally, as with firewalls, routers and switches, but they haven't done a good job on things like IPS and IDS where some other niche companies do a better job," said Akkawi. "In a lot of cases I think customers would be better off if these types of companies partnered instead of doing acquisitions or trying to build functionality into their existing products on their own. Sometimes a niche product that integrates well is going to be better than what these guys are talking about." Akkawi, who is a Cisco-certified IT pro, said that Sirva is constantly considering whether or not to go best-of-breed with independent vendors or buy into integrated security products like those being integrated by platform providers like Cisco's IronPort buyout. "These acquisitions will only work if a platform provider like Cisco can build the acquired technology into things they already do well. In some cases, these types of companies haven't been able to integrate everything they've bought, and we've seen some best-of-breed products go away," he said. "[Sirva] will likely continue to go fifty-fifty in terms of the integrated products we choose to buy, and the others we seek out to get true best-of-breed functionality." Many IT platform providers have moved aggressively in recent years to add security to their portfolios where it fits, as with EMC's buyout of authentication specialists RSA, along with IBM and HP's recent moves to add applications testing capabilities to their software development platforms via acquisition. The nature of the security industry is such that certain functions will be parceled into such widely-used technologies, while other newer tools will likely emerge from independents, said Mick Scully, vice president of product management at Cisco's Security Technology Group. Scully countered that despite any perception of cutting at innovation, Cisco is creating many new technology combinations that customers have responded well to, allowing its overall security business to crest $2 billion in revenues in the firm's fiscal 2006, representing a 25 percent annual growth rate in its overall security business. "There will always be a balance between best-of-breed and integrated security. The beauty of the market is that it is constantly changing at a rapid pace, and we will always see startups who address specific problems," Scully said. "But if you look at an acquisition like IronPort, we've left it almost entirely intact, run by the same team, even as we push its technologies into other products." Scully also highlighted the fact that Cisco has proven its chops as a security innovator, such as in creating the burgeoning market for NAC device authentication systems. He said that Cisco itself views its acquisitions as fifty-fifty propositions, looking for as many opportunities to continue to innovate the technologies its buys as it seeks opportunities to fold them into its other product lines. "It's an interesting dichotomy, I sort of see what these customers are saying, but we also believe that our standalone products, such as our NAC appliances, are already best-of-breed," Scully said. "As niche security markets become mature, merchant markets, we are going to look to get into those markets where we fit in; but we're also doing a lot of organic product development on our own, and we feel that we can offer best-of-breed capabilities in the security markets we compete in."
184178
Q2 less of a shocker Cisco posted a decent 2008 fiscal second quarter, yet remains gloomy about its near-term sales forecast in the US and Europe.â¦
214560
Cisco will pay approximately $200 million in cash and options. The acquisition of P-Cube is subject to various standard closing conditions and is expected to close in the first quarter of Cisco&#39;s fiscal year 2005.
752246
Cisco Systems Inc  posted a 7.2 percent rise in quarterly profit on Wednesday as demand for network equipment from telephone companies was steady despite the slowing U.S. economy.
743558
Cisco Systems (nasdaq: CSCO - news - people ) posted first-quarter results Tuesday, and investors are likely jumping like the firm&#39;s financials: Profit rose 29%, as the network equipper cited strong activity in both its traditional arenas as well as in
758432
Most U.S. companies have reported earnings and the flow of economic data slows next week, so investors will look to U.S. trade figures and earnings from leading technology stocks Dell and Cisco for fuel to sustain the market's 2-week-old rally.
345385
Cisco CEO John Chambers says that service providers will continue Internet build-out over the next decade.
737475
Cisco Systems Inc. on Tuesday reported significant gains in earnings and revenue for its fiscal 2005 first quarter that met analyst expectations.ADVERTISEMENTSBC Datacomm White PaperFind out how Crate & Barrel expects to save $180,000 by moving to VoIP, compared to a traditional PBX.
288888
Two recent studies, one of enterprise router users, the other of LAN switch users, confirm that customers consider Cisco the top dog of the router and switch industry.  The studies, released by analyst firm Infonetics Research, validate a trend seen in previous years.
480456
Blog: Cisco CEO John Chambers takes issue with a recent Businessweek story that claims the telecom industry has been resurrected from the dead, saying instead that the market is simply entering the next phase of develoment