Network World : Cisco

Shaw chooses Cisco for Wi-Fi network

Howard Solomon — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 21:35:00 GMT

Shaw Communications hasn't wasted any time getting ready for the Wi-Fi network it intends to build in Western Canadian cities. The Calgary-based carrier said Monday it has selected Cisco Systems Inc. to be the equipment supplier for its "extensive" network.

In a news release Shaw said the network will be available to its cable and VoIP home phone subscribers in various markets, but it didn't name the cities. Nor did it detail how wide the network will be within each city, but it did say Wi-Fi would be in "thousands of locations."

Shaw [TSX: SJR.B]will buy Cisco's [Nasdaq: CSCO] CRS-3 Carrier Routing System and use its ASR 5000 and 1000 series routers in the network. But apparently the way is open for other companies to supply the outdoor access points that will transmit signals to end users, for the release is silent on APs.

On Sept. 1 the carrier said it decided to build a series of municipal Wi-Fi mesh networks using free spectrum rather than a cellular network using the $190 million worth of spectrum it bought in 2008 because competition is increasingly making cellular a tough business.

Unlike cellular networks, which cover entire provinces, cities and towns, it is expected that Shaw's Wi-Fi network will only cover downtowns and large public spaces like shopping malls and convention centres.

A Wi-Fi network won't appeal to people who want the mobility cellular offers, but itcould beappreciatedby the thousands of people in downtown Calgary, Edmonton and other cities in Shaw's orbit who carry Wi-Fi equipped tablets, laptops and cellphones. It won't let Shaw compete with BCE Inc.'s Bell Mobility, Rogers Communications, Telus Corp., Mobilicity or Wind Mobile in the cellular and high speed wireless business, but it will give the cableco a mobility platform.

Construction of Shaw Wi-Fi will start late this year, with commercial deployment promised in the spring of 2012.

Cdn exec crows over Juniper’s ‘fabulous’ first quarter

Howard Solomon — Thu, 12 May 2011 20:19:00 GMT

Canadian executives from Juniper Networks held a long-scheduled briefing for reporters and industry analysts in Toronto today, by coincidence a day after competitor Cisco Systems Inc. released dismal third quarter results.

Not surprisingly, they were upbeat after what John Dathan, Juniper’s general manager for enterprise sales, called “fabulous” first quarter results released last month.

Financial analysts, he said, predict Juniper will record top line growth of 17 per cent this year over 2011 compared to nine per cent for Cisco. Of course, Cisco still has healthy market share.

There were no product announcements from the session, which was held just to keep observers up to date on the company’s doings. Among other things Dathan said is that about one-third of Juniper’s sales come from enterprises. After the session I asked him if he wants to grow that percentage here, and how fast.

“The company has a published strategy to become the next US$10 billion company,” he replied [it did US$1.1 billion in the last quarter, so this year it might hit US$4.5 billion]. “The addressable market for enterprise is far greater [than the service provider market], so we do have expectations to grow it significantly higher.” How high? He wouldn’t be specific, except to say the company expects him to hike enterprise sales this year by 35 per cent over 2010’s figure.

How? “The company is clearly investing in the right technologies to address customer needs. From a local perspective, we’ve grown our team to touch more customers, we’re working closer with partners to also get to more customers.

“I think one of the challenges we have here in Canada was simply being able to tell our story to the right people, and so the more [news] coverage we have and the more partners we enable to do that” the better.

Having just come back from new switching announcements by Hewlett-Packard Co. and Brocade Communications, I can report that Cisco’s competitors area more eager than ever to cut into its market share with new converged infrastructure switches. It’s the switch market where Cisco has lost the most.

These are still early early days – Juniper, for example, has only released one switch that can take advantage of its new QFabric infrastructure. More are coming, Dathan said, in the second half of the year.

I plan to write more deeply on Cisco in the next few days.

We're getting better in broadband. Or are we?

Howard Solomon — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 20:28:00 GMT

Another day another broadband study. The latest, funded by Cisco Systems Inc. and conducted by Oxford University’s Said School of Business, attempts to go beyond comparing speeds by measuring something called the “broadband quality” in 72 countries.

For the record, we’re 15^th in something called broadband leadership, but 10^th in mobile. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

I have a lot of trouble with vendor-funded research in general, because there’s an interest in the outcome. Broadband studies in particular also suffer because statistics used vary from country to country, despite international organizations that try to encourage standardization of data. Then there’s the arbitrary points system to give weight to various categories of data.

The Said report conjures up another standard: the number of countries ready to adopt the “Internet technologies of tomorrow.”

But if you accept the Said methodology, once again Canada is not in their top 10 list of of most categories it measured between May and June of this year, when the study was done. We’re 15^th (along with the U.S., France and Slovakia) on the list of broadband leaders, up from 17^th the year before, with 93 points. Tenth place Denmark had 102 points.

On speed alone, though, the average download throughput of the countries studied was 33.5 Mbps, and the average upload throughput is 17 Mbps. How'd we do?The study says, our average is 6.1 Mbps down and 716kbps up. (This test was done by analyzing the results of users who tested their computers on the speed.net Web site)

Our biggest cities couldn't even make the list of the 38 municipalities with the broadband quality to become “smart and connected.” Once again we’re not in the same league as Paris , New York, Tokyo, Seoul – or Riga, or Uppsala. (That’s OK, I suppose. NYC was the only North American city on that list). In Wi-Fi broadband quality we rank 25^th.

But we are 10^th in mobile broadband.

By comparison, in the latestConnectivity Scorecard -- overseen by Leonard Waverman of the University of Calgary's business school and sponsored by telecom equipment maker Nokia Siements Networks (NSN) -- Canada ranked ninth among “innovative nations,” a drop of two places. Note, though, that this report looks at consumer, business and government investment in infomation and communications technologies.

Want another take? In April, I reported on an International Telecommunication Union study, which has its own complex formula for rating countries.

Overall, these studies show we’re not doing too badly. Our biggest wireless carriers just built HSPA+ networks, they’re testing LTE, the phone companies are plowing hundreds of millions into fibre optic (although threatening that their pace will depend on a CRTC ruling), in Quebec City you can buy cable Internet that reaches up to 120Mbps and Ottawa is chipping in around $270 million over several years to help spread broadband to rural areas.

It’s true Canada is a huge country with wide swaths of empty land between urban centres, which makes it hard to bring economies of scale to building networks.

Still, I’d be happier if the boards of our leading telecom companies said their goal is to put us in the top 10 broadband rankings, no matter how they’re measured.

Who should shepherd the HP herd?

Greg Meckbach — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 17:11:00 GMT

Now that Mark Hurd has left his position as chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard Development Co., there's no end to the speculation as to who will fill his place.

Published reports include questions as to whether HP's board of directors will offer the job to someone like Google Inc.'s Eric Schmidt, Acadia Enterprises LLC's Michael Capellas, EMC CEO Joe Tucci or another CEO. Capellas headed Compaq Computer Corp. which HP acquired in 2002.

If I was an HP shareholder (and I am not), I would probably want a networking person brought in.

Although it would be nice to have a grand strategy kind of guy (or gal) to take over HP as CEO, what the company really needs is someone who can effectively take on Cisco Systems Inc.

While HP was founded during the Second World War, Cisco wasn’t formed until 1984. For most of HP’s history, Cisco didn’t exist. For most of Cisco’s history, it wasn’t much of a threat to HP.

But that changed in early 2009, when Cisco announced Unified Computing System, a blade server designed specifically for companies using virtualization technology in data centres. Then earlier this year, Cisco dropped HP as a certified reseller.

For its part, HP was making switches using the Procurve brand name, but was never a major player. Obviously, HP hopes to change that, since it acquired 3Com Corp. last year for US$2.7 billion.

HP has most of the major pieces you need to sell a complete enterprise solution, including storage, servers, switches and routers. With its Halo video conferencing line, it offers an alternative to Cisco’s Telepresence products, which Cisco has expanded by acquiring Tandberg SA.

So what HP could really use is a CEO who understands interoperability, especially in the data centre, and can persuade enterprises to buy a combination of HP servers, switches and storage, rather than go to IBM Global Services to buy IBM servers and storage, with Cisco equipment. After all, it has been said that IBM sells more Cisco equipment in Canada then Cisco.

I am not going to speculate on who will be the next HP CEO, but offer some people for consideration. A few disclaimers: I have no idea who the board is considering. I did not ask any of these people if they want the job at HP. And none of them have offered me any incentive to endorse them. Honest.

This list does not include Cisco CEO John Chambers, any of Cisco’s five presidents or 50 senior vice-presidents, nor does it include any of Cisco’s six executive vice-presidents. And no, I’m not exaggerating.

So whomight HP want to include in its short list?

Jayshree Ullal, CEO, Arista Networks Inc.

An electrical engineer by trade, Ullal was a senior vice-president for data centre switching products at Cisco after it bought her previous employer, Cresendo Communications, in 1993. Ullal is now CEO of Arista, which makes high-end data centre switches. I’m not sure how much she knows about storage and servers, but what’s important is she understands the challenges in getting all the moving parts in a data centre working together.

Nick Tidd, president for North America,D-Link Corp.

Tidd is a former senior executive with 3Com took over the vendor’s Canadian operation in 2000, when he was 35. He may not know as much about high-end data centre switching as Arista’s Ullal, but he knows the 3Com products that HP bought for US$2.7 billion. Born into a family of IT specialists, Tidd started his career as a teenager by installing networks at an Ontario Ministry of Health site in Toronto.

Charlie Giancarlo, managing director of Silver Lake and chairman, Avaya Inc.

His current employer is a private equity firm, but Giancarlo has a masters in electrical engineering and for 14 years worked at Cisco, where he was chief development officer. Giancarlo was appointed CEO of Avaya two years ago and is now the chairman.Like Ullal, his Cisco career started in 1993 due to a corporate merger. In Giancarlo’s case, he was working for Ethernet switch maker Kalpana Inc., which Cisco acquired.

So whether you have a networking person or not, the next HP CEO should be able to sell enterprise buyers on the concept of buying into HP’s notion of storage, servers and networking.

What would you do with 322 Terabits per second?

Greg Meckbach — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:46:00 GMT

In 2004, I spent my Victoria Day holiday near San Jose, Calif. covering the launch of Cisco Systems Inc.’s Carrier Routing System 1.

Been there, done that, got the T-Shirt. Literally.

I still have the T-shirt I got from the CRS 1 launch with the slogan, “What would you do with 92 Terabits per second?” As far as vendor T-shirts goes, this one stood up quite well. But I usually only wear it to the gym, because for some reason, it’s difficult to open up a conversation at the nightclubs by talking about the throughput of routers.

This morning, I didn’t travel anywhere to watch the launch of the Cisco CRS 3. Instead, I decided to save some time and watch the video webcast from my office -- not because I was only dressed in a T-shirt, but because I didn't have a lot of time to travel back and forth. In an unrelated matter, Cisco is banking on more companies using video for corporate purposes to help sell CRS 3 routers to carriers.

During the webcast Tuesday, Cisco president John Chambers said when CRS 1 was launched, some people questioned whether 92 Terabits per second was a little much.

At the time, it probably was. Although Cisco emphasized the 92 Tbps maximum capacity of CRS 1, when it was launched the cheapest version was actually a 16-slot chassis with 1.2 Terabits per second.

With the CRS 3, the version with 322 Tbps is a multi-shelf system with 1,152 slots. The four-slot single shelf system actually has 1.12 Tbps.

Cisco’s Patel said with a 322 Tbps CRS 3, you could download the entire contents of the Library of Congress in a second, and all the movies ever made in four minutes. So what would I do with 322 Tbps? I guess I’d never leave the house, except to pickup my official CRS 3 launch T shirt.

Despite rumours, Cisco will probably still buy Tandberg

Greg Meckbach — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:01:00 GMT

Rumours of the death of the Cisco-Tandberg merger are greatly exaggerated.

Over the past couple of days, there was plenty of speculation in the media that Cisco Systems Inc.’s offer to acquire video conferencing vendor Tandberg SA could fall through.

Published reports earlier this month quoted bankers as saying a group of Tandberg shareholders who collectively own 24 per cent of voting shares may reject Cisco’sUS$3 billion offer to buy Oslo-based Tandberg.

The latest speculation was based on ablog post from Cisco chief strategy officer Ned Hooper.

Hooper did not say Cisco plans to walk away from the deal.

Let’s see what Ned Hooper did say in his blog post:

-Cisco’s offer represents a 38.3 per cent premium to the closing share price on July 15;

-Cisco managers “strongly believe our offer is a very good price for Tandberg shareholders”

He also pointed out some risks, including executing on what would be their first acquisition of a European publicly-traded company, and integrating their engineering and sales operations.

“We believe that video will become the core of the collaboration market, but, it will require substantial innovation and investment to drive this market transition,” Hooper stated. “No acquisition should be pursued or completed if it runs counter to the broader principles of prudence and financial fairness.”

Cisco, which is scheduled to report its first quarter financial results Wednesday, is a rich company. It had US $5.7 billion in cash last summer. Last year it had net earnings of US$6.1 billion on revenues of US$36 billion.

If 24 per cent of Tandberg shareholders reject the deal, well, that leaves 76 per cent who might accept it. It’s rare for companies whose directors and managers have recommended a merger to have it rejected by a majority of shareholders. And if Tandberg’s shareholders do decide to hold out for a better offer, they should take a lesson from Jerry Yang, former CEO of Yahoo Inc. Microsoft Corp. offered a huge premium when it offered to acquire Yahoo but walked away from the deal when Yahoo managers would not accept it.