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

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

The new year...

I just finished off reading the new Network World articles on the most powerful people and companies. Has anyone else noticed that the list really hasn't changed that much over time. I think a list of most innovative people / companies would change more frequently and be more interesting. Its nice to have a ranking of who is who but everything they are rating on is not grounded in facts and they do little to nothing to tell you how they picked the individuals.

Hope everyone has a great new year, 2007 is upon us, year of the boar too.

- Ed

Side thought - not tech related

Well, I realized the other day that my 20 year for graduating from Gunn High School will be next year (2007). My older daughter will graduate from HS in 2009, I am feeling a bit old.
The only cool thing about all that is assuming our class actually gets a 20 year event together then I will get to see and hear what everyone is up to now and to toast those no longer with us. A bit off topic so sorry to those who read for the technical stuff. ;-)
- Ed

Slacking and Upcoming Cisco events

I haven't posted as of late mainly because there hasn't been that much interesting coming out of the networking industry. Perhaps that is due to the holiday slowdown. I don't really like talking about consumer stuff as there are a ton of folks out there doing that.
Next week will be the Cisco Partner SE VT events around the bay area so that should be cool. All Unified Communications products will be the focus. I've been learning a ton about the Cisco product line and I have to admit they are doing some very cool stuff. I am also very impressed with what I have heard about the ACE. I will post some more notes about that once I have gotten some good hands on time with it (hopefully very soon).
- Ed