Comments on: Reorg complete, Cisco hops back on the acquisition trail

By: Peter Summer

Peter Summer — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 09:42:08 +0000

Having acquired Lightwire to enhance Cisco’s capabilities in high-performance networking hardware, it’s time for Cisco to find the right light engine to power hi-speed optical interconnects. Innolume (www.innolume.com) could be an interesting target here.

By: mike dvorkin

mike dvorkin — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 05:23:23 +0000

I think it will be neither. Cisco has been generally incapable of selling software. Buying Nicira or Embrane would not fit their current model. Buying just for the street cred will not only be a waste of money, but will create negative impact internally. Also, adding OpenFlow interface will not help NXOS/5K because it basically shifts the value of the NXOS to the controllers — not a good model when you upsell on countless features. SDN should be in cards for Cisco, in the future, but not in the way most define it today.

By: Sandpaints

Sandpaints — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 05:33:13 +0000

Cisco could be looking at Dragon Wave who is in the process of acquiring significant worldwide assets from Siemens. Dragon Wave engineers also already have a working relationship with Cisco. It’s a combination that would continue Cisco’s out performance of its competition with overseas market expansion in mobile as well as cloud services.

Also, Dragon Wave fits very well into the model size of M&A for which Cisco excels.

By: Ari Echt

Ari Echt — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 03:49:34 +0000

With all of Cisco’s FlexPod innovation, another interesting play would be a hosted data center monitoring tool such as LogicMonitor that provides visibility across Cisco, VMware, and NetApp from one console.

By: BM

BM — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:13:41 +0000

Cisco already OEM’s gear from Wyse, that seems like low hanging fruit to pick up and expand virtual desktop offerings immensely? I like the NetApp call as well…

By: Rich Pappas

Rich Pappas — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:20:17 +0000

Stacey,

I’m inclined to think that Cisco will buy technology as opposed to an established player. I think an interesting play would be Linerate…

http://lineratesystems.com/

Rich

By: Brad Reese

Brad Reese — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:05:27 +0000

Hi Stacey,

Cisco’s Vice President of Mergers and Acquisitions recently joined Comcast Cable as Senior Vice President of Strategy and Finance:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/indersinghciscosystems

Furthermore, Cisco’s net realizable cash is actually lower than it was 10-years ago while having $16 billion more in debt:

http://www.bradreese.com/images/cisco-capital-structure-fy11.jpg

Finally, Cisco’s historical financial statements confirm -$809 million discrepancy in security sales:

According to Cisco’s historical financial statements, Q2′FY12 security sales were actually down -6.96% year-over-year, not up +24% as shown in its new statements.

Where did the -$809 million discrepancy go?

Note: Cisco did not respond to my repeated requests for clarification, nor did Cisco clarify the -$809 million discrepancy in its Q2′FY12 earnings call nor its Q1′FY12 earnings call.

http://www.bradreese.com/blog/2-8-2012.htm

Sincerely,

Brad Reese

By: Stacey Higginbotham

Stacey Higginbotham — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 03:04:35 +0000

By that logic maybe Cisco should by Embrane? As for Nicira, its open Flow agnostic, while Big Switch seems intent on building a business around its platform using Open Flow. Picking up Big Switch gets Cisco the OpenFlow cred and it doesn’t need to get much else. It could also could put somewhat of a damper on the ecosystem if Flood Light proves popular.

By: Steve Ardire

Steve Ardire — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:32:53 +0000

> Since software-defined networks and OpenFlow are clearly an emerging area in the networking space, Cisco should shell out money for a player in this space.

You mentioned Big Switch but did not mention Nicira which has raised raised $50 million

Nicira
@nicira Palo Alto, CA, USA
It’s time to virtualize the network.
http://www.nicira.com

But the impact of SDNs on the network hardware industry, of which Cisco is the dominant vendor, will not be felt for another couple of years, Mullaney says. Eventually, network intelligence will be sucked out of the hardware and housed in controllers at the edge of the network, acting as the brains of a “cheap” Layer 3 IP switching fabric, he says.

Cisco is preparing for the emergence of OpenFlow and SDNs. The company has stated plans to add OpenFlow to its Nexus switches, but beyond that, its plans for either embracing or combatting the SDN trend are unclear.

However I think Cisco needs do better than just next gen layer 3 and 4 IaaS with smart bets in intelligent cloud networking ( layers 5 – 7 ) for PaaS 2.0 and SaaS.

By: O

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 23:57:07 +0000

I agree that an acquisition in the storage space would be a nice compliment to UCS, but NetApp seems a bit large as a $15B company.

I still like the combination though. NetApp is a solid company showing good continued growth and currently well of its highs. With NetApp, Cisco would be able to offer a top to bottom hardware solution for virtualization.

Next stop, throw some weight behind an OSS hypervisor and save everyone from spending more on VMWare than the blades to run it.