Comments on: John Chambers on why Cisco never bought Skype

By: Kash

Kash — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 08:36:39 +0000

I have seen your comments many time. You are a Cisco basher. Go Away !

By: Divergent Trend

Divergent Trend — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 17:40:32 +0000

I wouldn’t call it a rare flub…

Consider Linksys, Flip and the very relevant $3.3B purchase of Tandberg – the maker of the “telepresence” systems that cost as much as a car while providing all the functionality of Skype and a $100 webcam.

That’s what this move is really about, adding value to their failing Tandberg investment.

Also, this piece demonstrates a lot of what I’ve grown to hate about Cisco as a customer. They pander to their largest customers (service providers in this case) at the expense of everyone else and their own growth.

By: Krish Ramakrishnan

Krish Ramakrishnan — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 22:36:25 +0000

This move to cloud services model is going to trip many companies especially those that have deep relationship with service providers such as Cisco. The fear of offending SPs is going to make them flat footed.
As to interoperability, the video conferencing industry collectively punted this issue until now when innovative startups such as our company Blue Jeans Network made interoperability the key value proposition by making Microsoft Lync and Skype work with Cisco Telepresence.
Krish Ramakrishnan
CEO, Blue Jeans Network
http://www.bluejeans.com

By: Brad Reese

Brad Reese — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 16:33:01 +0000

Hi Stacey,

Cisco’s unified communications sales appear to have lost their momentum!

I mean, Cisco’s Q2′FY12 collaboration revenue (which includes its unified communications sales) sequentially declined, in fact, its lower than the previous 2 quarters, Q1′FY12 and Q4′FY11:

http://www.bradreese.com/blog/2-9-2012.htm

Sincerely,

Brad Reese

By: quickgamer88

quickgamer88 — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 04:48:02 +0000

Reblogged this on quickgamer88.

By: Om Malik

Om Malik — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 01:02:23 +0000

Classic penny wise pound foolish mistake, they could have owned the protocol and the standard with 700 million plus customers and done interesting things with it. Of course that meant doing business with Charlie Guancarlo and Tony Bates and other ex-Cisco types.

Cisco will (and should never) try and go beyond its core capabilities — switches, routers and other networking gear. It might seem that Cisco has staged a recovery, but at best it is a company with lukewarm prospects.

By: onsip_m

onsip_m — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 23:28:34 +0000

Interoperability, or open standards? Skype’s not a good fit for large company-customer communication, Lync is too expensive for small businesses. Here is our take on this: http://www.onsip.com/blog/nicole/2012/02/22/cisco-appeals-microsoft-s-skype-take-over-is-this-really-necessary

By: Stacey Higginbotham

Stacey Higginbotham — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 21:05:29 +0000

i think it was less TP and more the mobile and wireline operators that Cisco was worried about offending.

By: Niklas Munck

Niklas Munck — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 20:32:15 +0000

Classic mistake. Cisco is by no means alone in this. If you don’t innovate to replace your profitable high margin business, somebody else sill do it for you. Telepresence will have a hard time making it beyond some big companies and banks. Skype already dominates the world. The relevant question was not whether it was going to conflict with Ciscos Telepresence product line, but whether Cisco would reap the benefits of Skype instead of someone else. It turned out Microsoft did.