Sunday, January 14, 2007

Cisco and Apple - what is going on?

Ok, this is strictly a personal observation and it has no merit in the technical sense.
Why is Steve Jobs' so stubborn? Cisco is a $175+ Billion company and Apple is at best a $80 Billion company - I guess that doesn't matter to much but I think the perception is that Cisco is MUCH bigger then Apple. Cisco is NOT known for suing anyone, if anything, it takes a lot to get them to sue you. The last big lawsuit I remember is Cisco suing Huawei and they settled that out of court which only re-enforces my point.
I think Apple has missed a huge opportunity to get on board with what Cisco is doing in the home networking space. It is not like they are tied to an operating system at all. Their products are deployed on about every OS out there due to Cisco non-stop acquisitions. If anything, Cisco has become more *nix friendly in the last few years.
Who else would be better to have a loose partnership with then Cisco for the Apple folks? I fail to see why Apple refused to license something that was so obviously in the licensing domain of Cisco. I am starting to think that a lot of the "free" as in free beer folks are right on trademark, copyright and other issues.
- Ed

Sunday, January 07, 2007

Cisco acquires IronPort

Happy New Year - its the year of the boar!
OK, I understand that Cisco wants to build a nice ecosystem around NAC and the service offering it can provide but I think it is a mistake to pick up some of the technology that could have built a better partner ecosystem rather then this approach. Cisco and IronPort seems to be an OK match but not a great one. Considering how many good player are out there in the Anti-Spam, Anti-Phishing marketing I think this was a short sighted purchase.
Well, Cisco seems to be on the buying spree again - lets hope it doesn't turn into a hog...
- Ed