Tag Archive for CSCO

| July 7, 2011
Comments Off on Too Late for Cisco to Take on Apple?

Too Late for Cisco to Take on Apple?

Too Late for Cisco to Take on Apple?Chronically under-performing Cisco is finally getting into the iPad tablet market. Cisco (CSCO) will be releasing Cius in July. Technology Review reports that Cisco’s Cius, is bulkier than the iPad, and has a smaller screen (7-inches wide, compared to the iPad’s 9.7). But it packs a number of tricks designed to woo business users.

Cisco logoTested.com says the Cius can connect to a Cisco phone network to port calls from a desk number to the tablet in order to make a user’s desk number mobile. This will enable a person to make and receive voice and video calls anywhere. The tablet features HD quality cameras front and back and can be used with a Bluetooth headset for more private calling.

The tablet can also be used as a desktop videoconferencing device when docked on a special desktop phone, and can smoothly switch between a WiFi a cellular network connection. The Cius can be docked to serve as a videoconferencing device. The dock supports a keyboard and mouse, so the Cius really can serve as a little computer, “It can replace my desktop operating system,” says Tom Puorro, senior director for Cisco’s collaboration technologies told Technology Review.

Tested.com says the tablet runs Google‘s (GOOG) Android 2.2 Froyo on an Intel (INTC) Z650 1.6GHz Atom chip and weighs 1.5 pounds despite its small 7” screen. Tested.com speculates that Cisco has heavily modified the open-source Android to support business-centric features like multi-person videoconferencing and virtual desktop software.

Engadget has a video demo of the product here.

The fully skinned Android tablet seems like a relic of 2010 thanks to the arrival of Honeycomb, a version of Android actually built for tablets–which the Cius isn’t running. Tested.com says Cisco plans to upgrade the tablet to Android Ice Cream Sandwich eventually, but for now, it’s slumming around with version 2.2 (Froyo). Cisco probably spent too much time developing its custom skin and software to upgrade to Android version 2.3 (Gingerbread) or version 3.0 (Honeycomb).

Cisu runs on AndroidCisco has also created its own app store, AppHQ, that has only apps deemed stable and secure by Cisco and segregated it from the Android app market. This gives the IT department greater control over what a Cius user can do. IT managers can shut down access to the Android app market to protect a company from malicious apps according to Technology Review. Companies can even create their own app store within AppHQ and limit employees to certain applications, or apps built in-house.

Cisco has demonstrated a Cius virtual desktop that runs in the cloud and makes use of a dedicated chip in the tablet that encrypts all its data says Technology Review

A Wi-Fi-only version of the tablet will be available worldwide from July 31 at an estimated price of $750. Cisco will sell it along with related services and infrastructure, so the cost to businesses will vary, and could be as low as $650. AT&T and Verizon will each offer versions for their 3G and 4G networks this fall.

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I wrote about the Cius here and don’t think it is an Apple Killer. Cisco will give its big partners a deal, but Cius also depends on an existing Cisco telephony infrastructure. I don’t see the Cius fitting in the Cisco product line-up since they jettisoned the Flip and are reportedly shopping Linksys and WebEx. The built-in virtual desktop looks pretty cool, though.

What do you think?

Can the Cisco Cius knock off the Apple iPad?

Does the Cius make sense in the non-consumer Cisco?

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| April 22, 2011
Comments Off on Tablets Notes

Tablets Notes

Forrester Report Casts Doubt on iPad Competitors

Tablets NotesThe New York Times cites a recent Forrester (FORR) report on the state and near future of the tablet marketplace titled “iPad Challengers Have Flawed Product Strategies.”

The report’s main conclusion was that Apple’s (AAPL) iPad competitors have not addressed pricing, distribution, and product differentiation adequately to make a case to consumers.

  1. The new tablets are too expensive. Apple has, unexpectedly, kept iPad prices comparatively low. The Motorola (MSI) Xoom starts at $100 more than the iPad and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab can be had for $250, but that does not include a two-year contract with a mobile carrier. Someone should be coming in to undercut this market, but that has proved harder than it looks.
  2. The wrong stores are selling tablets. Forrester’s research shows that one of the least desirable places to buy a tablet is at a cellphone store. But many tablet makers continue to rely on wireless carriers as a primary retail channel, which Forrester’s report concludes is a bad bet.
  3. The new tablets are not distinguished enough.  The average user does not care about specs because it’s about the apps that run on these toys.
  4. The new tablets are not Windows. Forrester’s survey said the number one operating system people want on a tablet is Windows. If Microsoft (MSFT) is not going to release a true tablet-ready OS until late-summer 2012, those who want a Windows tablet may have to wait for two generations of tablets.

Forrester speculates that an Amazon (AMZN) tablet could change the market. Amazon could offer more attractive terms to media partners than Apple. It already has scads of credit-card numbers for easy one-click app purchases. It has media offerings like streaming video. It now has some experience designing, marketing, and selling its own hardware with the Kindle.

Cisco Cius

CiscoDoes anyone remember Cisco’s Cius? In case you don’t No Jitter has an article from June 2010 by Zeus Kerravala of the Yankee Group. The Cius was purported to be a tablet that can dock into a base station and can act as a video phone. When undocked the device operates like a tablet computer that can be carried around and shared between workers.

Mr. Kerravala says the Cius tablet isn’t really meant to be a replacement for a laptop or an Apple (AAPL) iPad type of tablet. It’s a communications-centric tablet that can provide an easy interface into vertically specific applications, make videoconferencing portable and create a new way for people to interact with one another. The Cius will be centered on visual communications and not productivity applications like word processing and spreadsheets.

The Cius uses  Google’s (GOOG) Android operating system, perhaps to attract developers. The article says the Cisco (CSCO) of a few years ago would have chosen to build its own interface. Android is a key to the success of Cius. The likelihood of developers building applications for an Android-based Cisco device is higher than developers creating applications for a Cisco operating system.

According to the article, the Cius is to be priced under $1,000, comparable to a high-end Cisco IP phone. While no network operator partners were announced at the time, Cisco said that the device was WiFi, 3G, and 4G capable.

Are the End Days Nearing for PCs (and Macs)

GigaOm‘s Ryan Kim recently wrote that the glory days of the PCs are fading with the rise of more nimble smartphones and tablets. Wi-Fi provider JiWire confirmed this trend over the Christmas holidays. JiWire, which operates 35,000 public Wi-Fi hot-spots in the U.S., saw new iPad connections increase by 33.8 percent and new Android (GOOG) users were up 47.9 percent while new Mac users were down 28.1 percent and new PC connections were down 12 percent over the Christmas holidays. Mr. Kim writes that this trend marks people’s dependence on computers is waning as they find more utility and portability in smartphones and tablets.

This trend is shaking up the computer world according to GigaOm. Gartner (IT) recently predicted that PC sales would decline 10% in the face of increased tablet sales. And as mobile networks ramp up to 4G and Wi-Fi usage grows, it’s only fueling the interest in mobile devices. This is a major shift that is forcing all the big players to adjust. The author points out that:

  • Microsoft (MSFT) re-entered the smartphone game at CES 2011 with Windows Phone 7 with Windows OS on ARM (ARMH) designed chips.
  • Intel (INTC) is working hard to get its chips to run on mobile devices though it’s still an uphill battle displacing ARM-designed chips.
  • HP (HPQ) bought Palm last year and is prepping a line of WebOS tablets and smartphones.

Apple (AAPL) is forcing these changes on the industry according to Mr. Kim. the iPhone and the iPad made mobile computing more user-friendly. Apple CEO Steve Jobs predicted that overall PC usage would decline and suggested that lightweight devices like the iPad would do most of the tasks people needed. GigaOm says that companies that embrace this new reality, are the ones best positioned for the future. The new iFuture means PC manufacturers will have to accept that the switch to mobile devices may come at the cost of traditional computer sales. The article concludes that manufacturers can let someone else lure their PC customers away with a tablet or smartphone or they can build one themselves.

Tablets Are Hammering The Notebook Market: Acer Sales Off 10%

The BusinessInsider reports that Acer (ACEIY) has warned that its 2011 Q1 sales will be off 10%. The Taiwanese PC maker is blaming Apple’s iPad and it tablet cousins for devastating its key netbook business.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| March 7, 2011
Comments Off on Tech Titans Talk Tax Cuts with POTUS

Tech Titans Talk Tax Cuts with POTUS

Tech Titans Talk Tax Cuts with POTUSFortune is reporting that a group of tech, pharmaceutical, and energy giants are lobbying for a tax cut that would allow them to bring home the estimated $1 trillion they’ve got parked overseas at a steeply discounted rate. Fortune’s sources say that Apple (AAPL), Cisco (CSCO), and Oracle (ORCL)  are among the major players looking to win a one-year tax amnesty on their foreign earnings, allowing them to repatriate that money at a tax rate of about 5%, instead of the 35% they face now.

Multinationals prevailed on Congress to approve a one-year tax holiday once before, as part of a jobs package in 2004. Back then, the companies argued the relief would help them boost economic growth because they’d plow their repatriated money into research, investment, and hiring. And while plenty of outfits benefited from the break – 843 corporations made use of the holiday, bringing back a total of $362 billion, according to the IRS — the broader economic benefits were dubious.

The Treasury Department wrote rules trying to make sure that the recovered cash was in fact invested back into the companies. But money is fungible. Although the rules expressly prohibited using the funds for dividend payments or stock buybacks, later analysis has shown participants sent most of it to shareholders anyway. One study cited by Fortune from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that for every dollar of repatriated cash, companies bumped up shareholder payouts between 60 and 92 cents.

“A tax holiday would bring a substantial amount of cashback to the United States and paying that out to shareholders is good for the economy,” said study co-author Kristin Forbes, an economics professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and a member of then-President George W. Bush‘s council of economic advisers told Fortune. “But if you’re a politician claiming this will create a lot of jobs or new investment, it isn’t supported by the data.”

In order to sell the deal, Cisco CEO John Chambers and Oracle president Safra Catz argued in an October editorial in the Wall Street Journal that a second holiday would help put Americans back to work. But they don’t promise that companies would drive all of their repatriated money directly into job-creating investments. They acknowledge that companies might pass the money along to shareholders again. But Mr. Chambers and Ms. Catz argue on top of direct investments, the tax cut holiday would spur a new stimulus by boosting markets, thereby increasing consumer confidence. And they say the tax revenue itself could fund $50 billion worth of credits to encourage new hiring — a sum only possible in the unlikely event companies decide to bring home the entirety of their overseas reserves.

President Obama’s recent dinner with Silicon Valley’s tech titans was a star-studded event according to TechCrunch.

Obama tech- dinner toast

Invitee included Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz, Cisco’s CEO John Chambers, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, Netflix (NFLX) CEO Reed Hastings, Genentech Chairman Art Levinson; Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt; former state controller and venture capitalist Steve Westly Doerr, and Stanford University President John Hennessy. The event was held at Kleiner Perkins partner John Doerr’s home.

After the dinner, White House press secretary Jay Carney said the group talked about ways to invest in innovation and how to increase jobs in the private sector. He said Mr. Obama also discussed proposals to invest in research and development and his goal of doubling exports in five years.

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I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that what POTUS calls, “increase jobs in the private sector” would mean a “tax cut holiday” for the tech titans.

It should be no surprise that the Tech Titans who supped with POTUS were big political contributors and supporters of the tax cut holiday. What happened to “Yes We Can”?

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| October 3, 2009
Comments Off on Smart Grid needs IPv6

Smart Grid needs IPv6

Smart Grid needs IPv6Cisco Systems is looking at IPv6 as a critical component in securing the next-generation electricity distribution system. IPv6 is attractive to the Smart Grid initiative for two reasons, the first being an abundance of IP addresses available in the expanded 128-bit address space for all the gizmos they hope to sell in a market that Cisco pegs at $20 billion a year. “IPv6 is an interesting discussion and one that occupies a lot of bandwidth at Cisco,” Marie Hattar, Cisco’s vice president of network systems and security solutions marketing, told InternetNews.com. “Some people say that for smaller deployments, we could get away with IPv4, but the smart grid has a number of parts.”

The second benefit to the Smart Grid is the security features in IPv6 which will add a layer of protection to the vulnerable electric grid management systems. Security is also now top of mind as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is now investigating a report into potential threats to the West Coast power grid. Earlier this year, widely circulated reports noted that foreign entities—presumably from China—infiltrated the U.S. power grid on several occasions and have the ability to disrupt power distribution.

China infiltrated the U.S. power grid

At the 2009 Black Hat security conference, a security researcher detailed security vulnerabilities in smart grid meters. “If you think about hacking into a smart meter, it’s like hacking into your TV’s remote control — you still get your TV,” Ms. Hattar said. “The meters are a reporting mechanism but it’s not going to affect the electrical system.” Still, Cisco’s Hattar added that smart meter vendors are concerned about security and Cisco will work with them. “A key part is to build out an end-to-end framework that is secure. A lot has to do with isolation and not exposing the grid to points of entry that are hackable.”

“As utilities are looking to build out smart grid, it’s more effective to agree on a common protocol across the board as opposed to trying intermix different ones,”  Hatter says. “In many ways, this is like the early days of the Internet where we ultimately settled on IP. We see IP as the scalable protocol for smart grid and we’re working with a variety of vendors to advocate this and make this the key protocol of choice.”

Cisco is among the numerous IT vendors with initiatives for improving the power grid. IBM is working with several of its partners on power grid issues through its Smart Planet program.

There’s likely to be subsidiary benefits to the smart grid, like furthering the cause of IPv6  since tens of millions of users and new devices around the world will require connectivity. For example, with utilities adopting IP-enabled metering for thousands of homes connected to the network, there could be an issue with addressing over IPv4. On IPv6, thanks to its plentiful address availability, there are no addressing issues.

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Not only is this a technological issue, but it is an energy policy issue. An electrical grid that can support Smart meters, will allow energy producers to better control the flow of electricity, which will increase the efficiency of the electrical grid, which will, in turn, decrease our dependence on fossil fuels. America needs to get off of electrical generation by fossil fuels and this technology can speed the process before it is too late and gasoline reaches $7.00 a gallon making the current recession seem like a walk in the park.

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| September 26, 2009
Comments Off on Big Blue Props Up Broadband over Powerline

Big Blue Props Up Broadband over Powerline

Big Blue Props Up Broadband over PowerlineBig Blue continues to support Broadband over Powerline (BPL) as a way to close the broadband divide in rural areas. According to an IBM Global Financing press release the division has established a financing agreement with DS2, a supplier of integrated chip technology for powerline vendor International Broadband Electric Communications’ Broadband over Powerline Regenerating Unit (BRU) smart boxes. The BRU’s are attached to an electric utility pole to provide high-speed Internet signals to residential customers via the electrical drop. IBEC is working with rural electric utility cooperatives to extend broadband access to ‘unserved’ customers mainly in the South, East, and Midwest.

This is not Big Blue’s first major BPL investment. Even as many industry pundits were reading BPL its last rites, IBEC signed a $9.6 million agreement with IBM to deploy BPL networks in Eastern U.S. electric cooperatives. The investment was heralded by the Utilities Telecom Commission (UTC) as a “major step forward in bringing broadband services to the residents of rural America.” At that time, IBM and IBEC said they were working with the Midwest Energy Cooperative to deliver broadband over powerline to area residents and businesses throughout the seven counties the utility serves.

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Sounds to me like they are propping up their SmartGrid ecosystem in the upcoming battle with Cisco over the estimated $20 Billion a year electrical grid modernization market.

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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