Cisco, China's Haier in home networking deal
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Cisco Systems has entered into a partnership with Haier, the largest manufacturer of large home appliances in China, that will allow the companies to work together on a number of projects, including information infrastructure and home networking systems.
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(InfoWorld) - Cisco Systems is continuing to buy its way into social networking, acquiring some assets of the company that operates Tribe.net while letting the site remain independent. Cisco announced Monday it has bought selected assets of Utah Street Networks, a seven-person San Francisco company founded in 2003. It did not acquire Tribe.net, a social-networking site that has been overshadowed by the success of big names such as Friendster, Facebook, and News Corp.'s MySpace. Cisco did not reveal the terms of the deal, which has already been completed, in a statement Monday. With the purchase, Cisco gets a proprietary software infrastructure that Utah Street has used to create and maintain online communities on Tribe.net. The dominant networking vendor will integrate that software into its Cisco Media Solutions Group (CMSG), and certain Utah Street employees will join that team to continue software development, according to Cisco. Cisco started moving into content infrastructure last year with the formation of the CMSG, which made its first acquisition last month when itÂ bought social-networking software company Five Across. On Monday, Cisco announced that acquisition had been completed. The San Jose, California, company sees social networking as a key part of the way media companies and other enterprises will approach their customers. On Tribe.net, users can set up personal profiles, join interest groups, post blog entries and pictures, and review local businesses, among other things. Versions of the site exist for dozens of U.S. cities. Utah Street brings unspecified capabilities to Cisco that Five Across -- and even well-known social networking sites -- don't have, said Eric Chan, strategy and marketing director for CMSG. "This is also a company that has been going through the wars of running a social networking site over the past few years," Chan said. Among other things, that real-world experience taught the company lessons about how people use such a site, he said. Cisco is finished buying social-networking companies, at least for now, Chan said. CMSG's mission extends beyond that technology to a range of other tools for enterprises to make closer connections with their customers, he said. Most enterprises haven't yet started using social-networking technologies, but they could prove great tools for communication even within companies, said Yankee Group analyst Zeus Kerravala. Enterprise IT departments, which typically dictate what tools employees should use to communicate, should instead provide a variety of methods users understand and let them choose, Kerravala said. Cisco can pave the way for that change by combining several such tools in one package for enterprises to deploy. "I think it's very forward-looking by Cisco," Kerravala said. Demand for such consumer-style software will grow as today's young people enter the work force, he said. In fact, Kerravala thinks Cisco should go one step further into the future by buying Second Life creator Linden Research.
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Nortel Networks Corp. NT.TO NT.N,  one of the world's largest telecom equipment makers, said on  Thursday it has made progress on plans to establish a wireless  joint venture with China Putian Corp.
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(InfoWorld) - Silicon Valley will get a homegrown Wi-Fi network from Cisco Systems to provide Internet access in metropolitan areas spread across about 1,500 square miles. The Wireless Silicon Valley Task Force chose a group led by Cisco and IBM to build and operate the network, which will cover areas between the southern border of San Francisco and Santa Cruz, and from the Pacific inland to the opposite side of San Francisco Bay. Cisco will provide the infrastructure and IBM will be the master system integrator for the project. Their team, called Silicon Valley Metro Connect, also includes Azulstar Networks, which will be the service provider operating the network, and SeaKay, a nonprofit that will help get disadvantaged residents online. As municipalities around the world jump on the public Wi-Fi bandwagon, the Silicon Valley project takes a high profile because of both its location in a legendary high-tech region and its sheer size. Although Silicon Valley Metro Connect's current plans wouldn't cover the entire region, large parts of which are lightly populated or undeveloped, the project has gotten sign-in from 42 municipalities. A notable exception is Mountain View, which has its ownÂ city Wi-Fi networkÂ provided by hometown giant Google. Silicon Valley Metro Connect is now entering into negotiations with the task force, said Alan Cohen, senior director of mobility solutions at Cisco. There will probably be a wide variety of services and business models, including paid service, free Internet access and use of the network by government agencies, he said. The first parts of the network should be up and running in the fourth quarter, Cohen said, but he described the whole project as a "multi-year effort." The offering will focus initially on outdoor coverage in populated areas of cities, though some users may be able to reach the network from indoors. The company envisions a network that uses 802.11b/g to connect with users' notebook PCs and other devices and 802.11a, with directional antennas, for meshed backhaul links to wired networks. It will use a wireless LAN switch model with lightweight access points that are centrally controlled. Wider-range WiMax technology could come into play later, Cohen said. Cisco, IBM, and SeaKay also were behind a proposal for San Francisco's planned Wi-Fi network. There, theyÂ lost out to Google and EarthLinkÂ in April, but the group said it would compete for municipal wireless projects around the country under the Metro Connect banner.
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NEW YORK/SHANGHAI  - U.S. home improvement retailer Home Depot Inc.  said on Wednesday it had signed an agreement to buy Chinese home improvement chain The Home Way, marking its first foray into retailing in China.
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LONDON - Cisco Systems and Fujitsu Limited are to collaborate on the development of high end routers and switches and support each other&#39;s products, initially in the Japanese market.
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Cisco Systems Inc&#39;s Linksys home networking division yesterday said it has made a deal with Verizon Communications to have Linksys kit used in Verizon&#39;s VoiceWing voice over IP service.
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U.S. home improvement retailer Home Depot Inc.  said on Wednesday it had signed an agreement to buy Chinese home improvement retailer The Home Way, marking its first foray into retailing in China.
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(InfoWorld) - Cisco has completed its acquisition of WebEx Communications, entering the online collaboration services business through a $3.2 billion deal, the company announced Tuesday. Cisco will maintain WebEx's current business model of selling subscriptions for a Web-based service to enterprises that don't want to buy or build a collaboration system of their own, especially small and medium-size organizations. The Santa Clara, California, company is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Cisco, which plans to retain all its employees, said Cisco spokesman John Noh. The acquisition,Â announced March 15, further extends a networking equipment giant that is increasingly positioning itself as a software and services company. It followed buyouts of two social-networking companies, Five Across and Utah Street Networks, and all the technologies will complement each other, Chief Development Officer Charles Giancarlo said in March. The WebEx service lets companies share presentations, applications, and other data online, either asynchronously or in real-time sessions. The buyout will help Cisco compete against Microsoft and other vendors in collaboration and communication, and WebEx technology could also enhance Cisco's Unified Communications portfolio, according to Giancarlo. WebEx also offers a suite of productivity applications under the WebOffice brand, but Cisco doesn't plan to compete against desktop application suites, such as Microsoft'sOffice or Google's Google Apps, he said. The deal closed as expected in Cisco's fiscal fourth quarter. It was the first deal the company has made through a tender offer, in which the would-be acquirer publicly invites shareholders to sell their shares at a certain price at a given time, Cisco's Noh said. More than 90 percent of WebEx shares were tendered. A tender offer generally can be finished more quickly than other types of deals, such as cash purchases and share swaps, and makes it easier to offer attractive terms to employees in order to keep them on board, he said.
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Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO.O), the world's largest maker of equipment to direct traffic on the Internet, on Monday said it will buy privately held software developer P-Cube for about &#36;200 million in cash and options.
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Cisco Systems, the world&#39;s largest maker of equipment for directing Internet traffic says China is well on the way to becoming the world&#39;s technology hub.
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Cisco has sealed an alliance with Fujitsu in a bid to boosts its Japanese market presence. Fujitsu will act as a reseller for Cisco&#39;s high-end routing systems, especially the ultra-high-end
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Internet networking giant Cisco Systems agreed to acquire closely held Internet protocol service provider P-Cube for 200 million dollars in cash and options.
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Cisco has bought IP service control vendor P-Cube of Sunnyvale, California, in a cash deal worth about $200m. The company says the deal should allow its customers to run advanced IP services such as voice
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NEW DELHI -- Network equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc. will set up a center in India to support all aspects of its worldwide operations, the company's chief executive said Wednesday.
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Cisco Systems Inc., the world&#39;s largest maker of computer-networking equipment, formed an alliance with Fujitsu Ltd. to increase sales to Japanese telephone carriers.
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Cisco Systems has confirmed that it is to spend $200m to acquire privately held P-Cube, a California-based developer of internet protocol (IP) service control platforms.