New Technologies Used to Create New Vendors

Sure, Cisco already has relationships with a range of software companies. But pushing into the fast-growing blade server market will force Cisco to strengthen partnerships with operating system vendors, application providers, middleware developers and so on.

The people that use our product are professionals and corporate users (around 70% in North America), so we have always had a corporate focus (it is Outlook after all). We have been fielding a ton of demand to license our software for users in corporate environments…so we have been addressing that demand. Cisco’s participation recognizes that Xobni is being used heavily by corporate users (and professionals like lawyers, real estate agents, etc). Cisco knows those customers really well, so this is a big bonus for us to have them helping us.

Wake up Call: Rising Costs, Increasing Outages and Flat Budgets

An interest payment of $100-120 million is due by January 15, 2009.

1. The metro Ethernet network business will be sold - probably to Huawei - for between $500-million to $750-million. Nortel (NT) will proclaim it’s a great deal that will help with its new focus on software, service and VoIP. Analysts and investors will not be as enthused.

Even more funny, we both went wrong on the same ideas (major home builder failures, a bubble forming in tech stocks, etc). It was very strange how the ideas were very similar, so I'll be curious what this year's list brings and I'll post it when it comes out in a few weeks; I did less on the stock market, and more on economics this year.

2008 was a signature year of change - and not just in politics and economics. The changes in technology and the technology market were many and various, and some were profound. Here are the ones that I suspect were the most important.

As the country’s biggest spender on R&D by a country mile, Nortel is still an important part of Canada’s high-tech ecosystem. In addition to providing well-paid jobs, Nortel has been a valuable resource by providing Canada’s high-tech community with a steady flow of well-trained and experience engineers, developers and entrepreneurs. Many people have earned their stripes at Nortel, and then gone on to make important contributions at other companies within the high-tech sector.

The following is a brief overview of the the top ten companies from the list. These 10 companies “have devised winning strategies in their industries. They are the ones with the game-changing ideas, the greatest impact on consumers, and the bold tactics rivals emulate. None is infallible or without controversy”. Five of the 10 companies are US-based.

By the last board of directors meeting, on November 30, McCleary resigned and the chairman title was passed temporarily to director Orna Berry. On December 2, just two days after the shareholders’ meeting, director Hebert Anderson resigned for “personal reasons”, according to a company announcement.

The Cash Bargains screen

Amid news that there are three “serious” bids for Nortel’s (NT) Metro Ethernet Network business, China’s Huawei Technologies has apparently made an offer.

Operating Today's Data Centers & Key Industry Trends that will Affect Your Business

The discussion was targeting many aspects of the colocation business and Equinix product offer, but the main interest, from an investor point of view, was Dan Golding's speech about the state of the sector, and his forecast for the close future.

F1Q09 (Qtr End 11/30/08) Earnings Call Transcript

F2Q09 Earnings Call

That means that the networking industry needs to articulate its relevance to these initiatives more forcefully as IT automation initiatives continue to connect to the static TCP/IP network. A weak economy will also make the business case a more significant part of the sales process; which will increase the pressure on networking vendors to automate core network services, thereby setting the stage for dynamic network infrastructure capable of keeping up with new dynamic systems and endpoints.

Analysts suggest the potential buyers include Cisco (CSCO), Huawei (which plans to open a small office in Kanata, Ontario), Nokia Siemens ([[NOK]], [[SI]]). Originally, analysts expects MEN would fetch $1-billion to $2-billion but the decline in financial markets means it will be much less than that.