Network Hardware

Nexus 2000s Don't do Local Forwarding

2012-05-19T08:53:00.002-07:00

A Nexus 2000 series switch, often referred to as a fabric extender or FEX, relies entirely upon its parent Nexus 5000 or 7000 switch for all forwarding. Using the topology below as a reference, for host A to send a packet to host B, that packet must be sent up to the parent Nexus 5000 for a forwarding decision to be made and then back down to the FEX.

For this reason, it is critical to provide plenty of throughput to downstream FEXes; 20 Gbps for 24 GE interfaces and 40 Gbps for 48 GE interfaces are the recommended budgets. This effects a slight oversubscription ratio of 6:5, or 1.2:1. Provided that each FEX is physically located within a few racks of its parent switch, 40 Gbps can be delivered relatively cheaply using Cisco-proprietary fabric extender transceivers.

ITC bans import of infringing Motorola Android devices

2012-05-19T08:26:00.001-07:00

The commission's order affirms an initial determination from an administrative law judge in December 2011. The ITC began investigating the issue in November 2010, in response to a complaint from Microsoft. The ITC found that Motorola's devices infringe on Microsoft's patent number 6,370,566, which describes "generating meeting requests and group scheduling from a mobile device." Microsoft had originally alleged that Motorola was infringing nine patents, but they were eventually reduced to one. The order is subject to a 60-day presidential review, during which time Motorola must post a US$0.33 bond for any device it imports with the infringing technology. Motorola spokeswoman Jennifer Erickson said the company was "disappointed" but would "not experience any impact in the near term," pending the presidential review and a possible appeal. Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The order was first reported by Florian Mueller's Foss Patents blog. Mueller said Motorola will likely respond by removing the offending feature. Google, which is in the process of acquiring Motorola, had filed a brief with the court indicating that the ban would not be in the public interest. The commission dismissed that argument.

HP's layoff plans and what they mean

2012-05-19T08:25:00.000-07:00

HP is expected to announce a large layoff at its quarterly investors briefing on Wednesday. As many as 30,000 employees may be cut. That's almost as many employees as Apple has added in the last two years. HP hasn't made official any plan to chop its approximately 350,000 employee global workforce. It's not commenting on the reported layoffs, neither confirming nor denying. But the stage is set for action. In its most recent quarter, HP's net revenue of $30 billion was down 7% from the prior-year period. Revenue from HP's Personal Systems Group, which sells PCs and workstations, declined 15% in that same period. When Apple was selling iPads by the boatloads, HP was having a $99 closeout sale of the Touchpad, its own tablet. Apple's global workforce grew from 34,300 in 2009 in to 60,400 in 2011. Even areas that HP expected to see growth, services in particular, aren't delivering. HP's big move into services came with its acquisition of EDS in 2008, which instantly added 147,000 employees to the company. In its most recent quarter, services revenue of grew 1% year over year. Andrew Bartels, an analyst at Forrester, doesn't see HP's plans as a bellwether of a larger problem in IT. HP's problem is that it is losing share to Apple, and faces a lot of competition, as are many other firms, from Indian offshore firms. "Outsourcing jobs at U.S. firms have been lost by shifts to India," said Bartels. That's been offset by the overall growth of outsourcing, but "India has taken its toll. "HP has been stuck in some slower growth categories overall," said Bartels. This is potentially a big layoff for the U.S. tech sector. HP doesn't detail how many U.S. workers it has, but the trend at large IT companies, IBM in particular, has been to reduce the size of their U.S. workforce and expand in fast-growing overseas markets. Some of HP's job cuts may be due to cost-cutting and consolidation, thanks in part to its recently announced decision to combine the printer and PC units. The cut may involve shifting some work to lower-wage countries as well as boosting its presence in healthier economies. It is unknown how many of HP's layoffs will be U.S.-based, whether the layoffs will be over a short period or spread out over years. But it doesn't take too many layoffs in the tech sector to have an impact on overall employment. The TechServe Alliance, an industry group that has been tracking IT employees for years, puts the IT workforce at 4.17 million, and estimates that IT employment grew by 117,000 jobs, or 2.9%, between April 2011 and last month. Victor Janulaitis, CEO of Janco Associates, a research firm that analyzes IT wage and employment trends, said 20,600 IT jobs were added in the last three months ending in April. He sees a struggling IT hiring market, and said more IT job seekers have stopped looking for work, with participation rates, meaning unemployed and not looking for a job, at the lowest rate since 1980. Janulaitis believes any HP layoffs could hit IT areas that have been otherwise doing well, such as system and applications design. How affected employees fare post-HP may depend on where they live. Laid-off workers in Palo Alto and Boston will likely get jobs quickly, but in Chicago, Dallas and Arizona that task may be harder, he said. Janulaitis believes the layoffs may make some companies cautious about hiring. "IT is not just recovering very well," he said. Bartels believes the problems are specific to HP. "It's more about HP than about the tech sector," he said.

Aruba Simplifies IT Management of Employee-Owned Mobile Devices

2012-05-07T20:33:00.002-07:00

Aruba Networks this week unveils software designed to protect corporate data and networks when accessed by employee-owned mobile clients, whether laptops, tablets or smartphones. The software, ClearPass Policy Manager, offers a set of modules that let enterprise IT groups streamline provisioning, inventory, security and management for personal devices used for work purposes, a trend often dubbed "bring your own device" or BYOD. Aruba's software is intended to make it simpler to securely manage a much more varied client environment, especially in mobile deployments, and to provision secure network access, a feature missing from at least some other mobile device management (MDM) applications. SECURITY MINEFIELD: 'Bring your own device' will bedevil IT security in 2012 ClearPass Policy Manager can be bought preloaded on a server appliance or as a VMware virtual machine instance. The application can work with the major mobile and PC operating systems in the enterprise: iOS, Android, BlackBerry OS, OS X and Windows 7. The new product combines code from two Aruba acquisitions, Amigopod, for guest access and management, and from last December, Avenda Systems, whose mobile management software is the heart of Policy Manager. The new offering includes the FreeRADIUS open source software, for authentication, authorization and accounting, but the Policy Manager also can work with an existing AAA/RADIUS infrastructure. Policy Manager consists of the core application, and four separately licensed modules: Onboard, a self-service mobile provisioning portal for employees; Profiler, which creates a detailed inventory of each device; OnGuard, which is a Network Access Control application, including the quarantine and cleanup of compromised devices; and Guest, for registering and managing guest access to the network. One additional cloud service, ClearPass QuickConnect, can automatically configure wired and wireless network settings for personal devices. The actual provisioning is set up in advance by IT administrators working with ClearPass Policy Manager, which lets them set a range of policies for devices by device type, OS, user groups and other variables. Users then can register their devices for access on their own, via a Web portal, and have them automatically configured for such enterprise-standard protections and services as 802.1x authentication, a VPN client, Exchange ActiveSync, and machine IDs or certificates. When users attempt to log into the corporate network for the first time, they're redirected to the portal, where an application wizard walks them through the configuration process. Once that happens, these personal devices become uniquely visible to IT. "By provisioning the device and giving it a unique ID, it gives us a degree of control over it that we wouldn't have otherwise," says Robert Fenstermacher, director of product marketing, for Aruba, Sunnyvale, Calif.A Continue Reading

Aruba Unveils Portable Access Point for VOIP

2012-05-07T20:32:00.002-07:00

Aruba Networks will announce this week an enterprise-class mobile access point that will put users at the edge of their corporate network no matter where they are located. When it becomes available, the hardware-software solution will set up a tunnel across the Internet to the Aruba Centralized Mobility Controller sitting behind a corporate firewall. It will also include a choice of two access points -- a portable model, AP-65, measuring three-by-three inches; and model AP-41, designed for home office. "It is as if the enterprise wireless went with them. It pops up as a corporate hot spot wherever you plug into," said the Aruba Networks founder Keerti Melkote. The solution would look the same to end-users as a VPN for data. However, the solution is more manageable than a VPN because it includes an access point, according to Craig Mathias, principal with the Farpoint Group. "It is, in effect, an enterprise-class product controlled by the enterprise switch," Mathias said. Beyond data, the Aruba architecture will allow corporate users of VOIP systems to take their office phone number with them. By plugging in the access point to an Ethernet connection a mobile worker can use a wireless, IEEE 802.11x handset, and have his own phone number wherever and whenever he plugs in, noted Melkote. AP 65, for the mobile office is priced at US$495. Model AP 41, optimized for home/office, is priced at $195,

CIO Rebecca Jacoby Steers Cisco's IT Ship

2012-04-02T23:07:00.000-07:00

Running the internal IT operations of Cisco Systems (CSCO) is a big job not just because of the size of the company -- more than 70,000 employees worldwide and a market capitalization in the range of US$100 billion -- but also because Cisco is continually developing new IT products across a broad range of technologies and is known for rapidly adopting those products for its own use. Cisco CIO Rebecca Jacoby spoke with IDG News Service on the sidelines of the NetWork conference last week and shared some insights into the legendary enterprise IT company's own enterprise IT.
IDGNS: What is the scope of Cisco's IT operations?

Jacoby: We're headquartered in San Jose, but less than 50 percent of the IT organization is located in California. A large percentage is in Bangalore. I also have about the same amount in Raleigh, North Carolina, and we have a substantial number of employees in a couple of sites in Europe, and a few in Shanghai. We service most of the globe mostly from those sites, but there are also a number of employees that are distributed globally to various places. It's a little bit over 3,100 employees that are Cisco employees. Depending on what initiatives are going on, we employ probably 6,000 to 8,000 employees [from outside Cisco].

IDGNS: What's the best way for an enterprise to manage employees' mobile devices?
Jacoby: We went through this as a big question ... a couple of years ago. What we've learned is that if you give them no choice whatsoever, that isn't what works for people. We need to be able to give the individuals choice. And to do that, you have to take a shared responsibility to how you address the total cost of ownership of these devices. We actually have applied a certain amount of that cost to the individual, where they're making certain types of choices, but we absorb a certain amount of it within the company as well, in terms of support costs and those types of things.

IDGNS: How do you get employees to use new technologies such as Cisco's Quad collaboration platform?

Jacoby: It's sort of an interesting dynamic in our company, and I think this is true in most forward-thinking companies: I have more of a challenge in terms of getting it to scale to the level people want to use it, versus getting people to use it.

Cisco Boosted Profit, Sales in Q2 While Cutting Costs

2012-04-02T23:06:00.000-07:00

Cisco Systems posted year-over-year gains in revenue and profit for its fiscal second quarter on Wednesday, reporting net sales up 10.8 percent to US$11.5 billion, and said it met a key cost-cutting goal one quarter early.

Cisco earned $0.40 per share according to generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), up more than 48 percent from the second quarter of 2011. Its non-GAAP profit was $0.47 per share, beating the estimate of $0.43 from analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial. The analysts had forecast sales of $11.23 billion.

"We are executing well on our three-year plan to drive earnings faster than revenue," Chairman and CEO John Chambers said in a press release. "We hit our billion-dollar expense reduction a quarter early," he added.

Wednesday's report covered the second quarter of the company's three-year plan to improve profits, which was laid out at its 2011 financial analyst conference in September. Cisco kicked off the effort after slumping results triggered a 150-day reorganization last year. Among other changes, a company structure based on a set of councils was replaced with a more traditional organization.

Cisco slowed down its usually aggressive acquisition activity during the slump but is now back in the game, Chambers said. The company's ideal buyout target remains the same as before, he said: a company with about 100 engineers and a product about to come to market. It especially likes companies when Cisco's customers recommend the acquisition.
The company's UCS (Unified Computing System) server lineup grew significantly in the second quarter, with revenue up 91 percent from a year earlier and an accumulated customer count of 10,763. With both these servers and the Nexus line of switches, Cisco expects to gain ground in data centers because of virtualization and cloud strategies, Chambers said. The line will blur between servers, networks and storage, which Cisco is addressing through its partnership with EMC and VMware, Chambers said. Overall data-center revenue was up 88 percent.

Routing and switching revenue also grew, though each by only 8 percent. Revenue from service-provider video infrastructure, another key focus at Cisco, grew 23 percent.
Cisco's product orders grew 5 percent in the Americas; 7 percent in Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and 14 percent in Asia-Pacific, including Japan. While orders for enterprise and commercial products each rose 7 percent, and service-provider orders jumped 12 percent, public-sector ordering fell 1 percent amid budget cuts, especially in the U.S., Chambers said.

For the current quarter, Cisco forecast revenue growth of 5 percent to 7 percent and non-GAAP earnings of $0.45 to $0.47 per share.

CopperEgg Expands Real-Time Server Process Monitoring Today

2012-03-29T23:50:00.000-07:00

If you are looking to do real-time monitoring of your server processes in addition to seeing the overall conditions of your Windows, Linux and Mac OS servers, then take a look at the new v3 of Reveal Cloud that was announced today by CopperEgg. We last covered them in July here. CopperEgg has hundreds of RevealCloud customers who are actively monitoring thousands of servers around the world.

The new version can provide more insight into what is going on inside your servers, as you can see in the screenshot above. For example, you can find out what processes are consuming abnormal amounts of memory or CPU cycles. RevealCloud can handle physical, virtual, and cloud systems. The monitoring is all browser-based, and CopperEgg provides full functionality for up to two servers to try it out, with paid versions for more servers.

Cloud Storage Competition Heats Up With RiakCS

2012-03-29T22:00:00.000-07:00

This post is part of our ReadWriteCloud channel, which is dedicated to covering virtualization and cloud computing. The channel is sponsored by Intel and VMware. Read the case study about how Intel Xeon processors and VMware helped virtualize 12 business critical database applications.

Add Basho to the companies looking to take a chunk of the cloud storage space. Today, the company announced RiakCS, a "multi-tenant, distributed, S3-compatible cloud storage platform" that runs on top of the Riak-distributed database. The question isn't really whether Basho can cut into Amazon's business, but how much.

According to J.P. Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth, Amazon Web Services overall is expected to be a $2.6 billion business by 2015. S3 is a pretty big chunk of that.

We've noted previously that Amazon S3 is seeing staggering growth. According to stats from January, Amazon had 762 billion objects stored in S3. That's a year-over-year growth of 192%, says AWS evangelist Jeff Barr.

RiakCS Versus Amazon S3
Is RiakCS competitive with Amazon S3? I guess that depends on your criteria. The feature-set for RiakCS looks competitive. According to the "Building Your Storage Cloud," (PDF) white paper from Basho, RiakCS looks like a robust and S3-compatible system.

The company is targeting service providers that might want to offer S3-compatible storage or Dropbox-like services, and companies that might want to host their own S3-compatible storage.

Note that the Basho white paper is inaccurate in at least one regard. The paper claims that Amazon offers "no guarantee of service - Amazon does not provide or offer a service level agreement to customers." Actually, Amazon does provide an S3 SLA, which promises "commercially reasonable efforts to make Amazon S3 available with a Monthly Uptime Percentage (defined below) of at least 99.9% during any monthly billing cycle." If S3 is unavailable for some reason, customers can get a 10% credit for uptime less than 99.9% but more than 99%. They can receive a 25% credit for less than 99%.

It may not be a very good SLA, but it's an SLA.

There's at least one feature discrepancy between S3 and RiakCS, in terms of supported object size. RiakCS has a 5GB limit on object size, whereas Amazon S3 has a 5TB limit. Note that Amazon's object-size limit was 5GB until December of 2010, and was raised in part to cope with use cases like storing uncompressed movie files.

Pricing should be to Basho's advantage, kind of, for large-scale storage problems. When I asked Basho about its pricing, I was told that prices start at $10,000 per storage server. Assuming a 24TB server, they say, you should be looking at about $0.40 per GB total for the cost of RiakCS alone.

Amazon, on the other hand, starts at $0.093/GB per month for reduced redundancy storage or $0.125/GB per month for regular S3. Amazon's simple monthly calculator says that 24TB of storage will run about $2,718 a month, which means you'd pay off the licensing fees in less than four months.

On the other hand, the $0.40/GB cost that is projected by Basho doesn't take into account any hardware, energy or personnel costs.

RiakCS isn't the only game in town, of course. Eucalyptus Walrus provides an S3-compatible storage layer that companies could build on without any costs, though it doesn't seem to be quite as full-featured as RiakCS - particularly when it comes to the reporting/accounting features for RiakCS.

If you're looking at alternatives to Amazon S3, what features are most important? Is it enough for a company to offer a solid on-premises solution, or is there something that would make a cloud-storage offering the category killer?

iPads, iPhones Hit Help Desks Hard

2012-03-16T01:24:00.000-07:00

What happens when your iPad goes on the fritz? Take it to an Apple Genius, of course. If it's an iPad used for work, though, you'll probably ring up the help desk first—and this means CIOs better be ready to support consumer products.

There's just one problem: While the help desk is being tasked to do more in the age of consumerization of IT, additional resources are not forthcoming.

At least this is a key finding in PC Helps survey of nearly 500 IT leaders across healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, education and retail about their pain points of consumer gadgets in the enterprise. More than 65 percent reported no increase in support resources, despite nearly 70 percent experiencing a significant increase in demand for the help desk.

And we're not just talking about company-owned consumer gadgets, either. More than 40 percent of respondents reported that their companies allow employees to bring their own devices. It's an emerging trend called BYOD (bring your own device) that is wrought with IT challenges.

Consumer gadgets can be anything from Apple iPads to Android smartphones to BlackBerry PlayBooks. The overwhelming majority—more than 85 percent—have seen an increase in the use of iPhones and iPads, according to PC Helps.

Speed Trap Ahead for U.S. Telcos

2012-03-16T01:22:00.000-07:00

Apple's (ticker: AAPL) unveiling last week of a new iPad with LTE cements its importance. LTE is branded as a kind of 4G service.

Verizon Communications' (VZ) wireless unit has been the leading proponent in the U.S., but one day it is expected to be deployed by just about every phone company around the globe.

For consumers, it's fast, really fast.

LTE's "theoretical maximum" speed, as nerds put it, is 300 million bits per second. That's as fast as the fastest WiFi networks in homes and offices.

The telephone companies are happy because LTE not only moves units of phones, but also lets carriers squeeze more bits out of each hertz, the fundamental unit of measurement of wireless spectrum.

"It's the closest thing we've seen to a win-win in telecom," says Craig Mathias, principal with wireless consultancy Farpoint Group; what benefits the phone company has sometimes come at the expense of what consumers want.

LTE already has deepened the disparity among U.S. carriers.

Verizon and AT&T (T) are far ahead of others. Verizon has the ability to serve 200 million U.S. citizens in various markets across the country with LTE, versus 75 million for AT&T. Sprint-Nextel (S) is just getting started.

"To the extent people realize LTE is a faster download, it will be a competitive advantage," says Piper Jaffray's Chris Larsen, as will the breadth of the LTE coverage.

LTE "should help Verizon continue to capture the lion's share of new smartphone subscribers, and potentially a much higher share of tablet subscribers," says Davenport & Co.'s Drake Johnstone.

For Verizon and AT&T, the benefits nevertheless are not clear cut.

For one thing, LTE is just at the beginning of the road.

"It's a big, shiny, empty network at this point," says Jennifer Fritzsche, who follows Verizon for Wells Fargo.

As that service fills up, it will require increasing capital investments.

A recent report by Cisco Systems (CSCO) said that while LTE and other 4G connections are only 0.2% of all mobile connections, they generate 6% of the traffic.

Moreover, the true payoff only comes if customers are satisfied, not disappointed. And that will depend on how expectations are managed.

Times have changed since the very first iPhone was introduced in 2007, when Apple reportedly demanded that any carrier selling the phone provide unlimited monthly data subscriptions. Both AT&T and Verizon now cap how much you can use.

The problem is that with fancy gadgets such as the new iPad and, presumably, the next iPhone, users will bump up against the reality that faster speeds just let them blow through their contracts quicker.

"Any customer who succumbs to the temptation to download a movie on their iPad via LTE will soon learn the error of their ways," with a fat phone bill, says Craig Moffett, who follows the phone companies for Bernstein Research.

As a result, Farpoint's Mathias expects more interest in what's called "WiFi offloading," where customers are bumped from LTE onto the nearest WiFi network.

Cisco taking more 'integrated and holistic' approach to network security

2012-02-27T17:40:00.000-08:00

SAN FRANCISCO – As the network security landscape changes worldwide at an increasingly fast (and dangerous) pace, Cisco argues that we need to take a new approach towards the big trends affecting the IT industry.

Speaking at Cisco Security Media Day on Monday afternoon, Cisco’s new senior vice president of its Security and Government group, Chris Young, offered details about the future of Cisco Security.

Young commenced by citing three “mega-trends” affecting security right now: mobility, the cloud, and sophisticated threats to individuals.

The common thread among all of these is the network, as Young posited that Cisco is in a “unique position” here to meet the needs and endpoints of all three of these topics.

According to Young, the network sources all data, handles all devices, routes all requests, controls all flows, sees all traffic, shapes all streams, and touches all users.

“The network is going to be the only place where we can solve tomorrow’s security problems,” said Young.

One of Cisco’s solutions tackling these issues is Cisco’s SecureX technology, a context-aware, network-centric security framework that debuted last year.

Overall, the core themes behind SecureX are leveraging visibility, context and control across the infrastructure for every customer in the marketplace.

Longer term, Cisco is planning to take an integrated and holistic, network-based approach across Cisco architectures.

“It’s about taking the power of what we’re going to deliver to you,” Young explained, “and bringing that into Cisco’s core architectures,” whether it be directed at products for enterprise customers or service providers.

University dumps Cisco VoIP for open-source Asterisk

2012-02-27T00:48:00.000-08:00

"We thought that it will be more cost effective in the long run to go with an open source solution, because of the massive amounts of licensing fees required to keep the Cisco CallManager network up and running," says Daniel, who this week gave a presentation on his migration project at the VON show in Boston. In the Cisco model, each phone attached to the CallManager required a separate licensing fee to operate, Daniel says. In SHSU's Asterisk/Cisco model, where it will keep its existing Cisco phones but attach them to Asterisk servers on the back end, the phone licensing costs are eliminated.

SHSU so far has moved 1,600 IP phones from Cisco CallManagers to Asterisk, which runs the IETF-standard version of SIP. The Asterisk functions are spread across six redundant Dell servers: two act as redundant PSTN gateways (and are outfitted with four-port T-1 cards from Digium, which commercially distributes Asterisk); two more servers handle call processing; another set provides voicemail.

The Cisco 7940 and 7960 IP phones the school had deployed were updated with a standard SIP software image replacing the proprietary Cisco Skinny Call Control Protocol (SCCP, or "Skinny"), which was used to connect the phones to the CallManagers. When the IP phones were upgraded with the SIP image about a month ago "all we had to do was reboot the phones," in order to register them with the Asterisk server, he says.

More control over the IP PBX software and servers was another reason SHSU made the Asterisk jump, Daniel says. "We felt we were more susceptible to hacks," since only Cisco-approved servers updates and patches could be installed on the Windows Server 2000-based CallManagers, he says. "We have a lot more peace of mind with the open-source system. If a bad exploit is found in SIP, we can fix it ourselves."

Besides the phones, Cisco gear still comprises a large chunk of the IP telephony infrastructure at SHSU. The entire WAN and LAN is based on Cisco routers and switches. The Catalyst switches already installed support power over Ethernet (for powering IP phones) as well as QoS for voice traffic. All voice traffic on the campus network runs separate from data traffic in its own VLAN segment. Additionally, Cisco VG228 gateway devices, which can connect up to 24 copper/analog phones to an VoIP network, is used in dormitories and other areas where just a basic phone is needed instead of a more costly IP handset, Daniel says.

So far, SHSU has been able to operate the Asterisk/Cisco IP phones at one-third the cost of CallManager/Cisco IP phones, Daniel says. When the digital Nortel handsets are migrated to SIP-based Cisco phones, or analog sets, another large chunk of savings will come just by shutting down the electrical and cooling resources required to keep the old PBX running. "The Meridian takes up an awful lot of power itself. The room it's in has to be cooled to 60 degrees, and it has to have its own generator," Daniel says.

While Asterisk and the SIP protocol lack some of the more extensive features on the Cisco CallManager, the university community has handled the transition with few glitches. The only major feature missing in the Asterisk/Cisco phone network is secretarial functions, which allow an administrator to manage and answer phone extensions for multiple end-users. To fix this, Daniel is looking into extensions to the SIP protocol that allow for multiple-line handling, he says.

In another potential issue with open-source VoIP, SHSU loses the technical support from Cisco with its Asterisk migration. But Daniel says he has so far been able to keep up with support issues through mailing lists and the online community that develops and supports Asterisk. Dell provides support on the server hardware, and Digium supports the T-1 cards installed in the boxes.

"We try to have checks and balances," among the IT staff that supports the Asterisk system, Daniel says. "We try to keep the [the Linux and Asterisk server images] as pristine as possible." Daniel has also created copious documentation on all the Asterisk configurations and changes he's made to the software. "Basically if someone were to have to come in and take over my job, they'd have a pretty quick turnaround on learning what needs to be done," he says.

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2012-02-21T20:39:00.000-08:00

Aruba Networks on unveils software designed to guard company knowledge and networks when accessed by employee-owned mobile shoppers, whether or not laptops, tablets or smartphones.

The software, ClearPass Policy Manager, offers a group of modules that permit enterprise IT teams streamline provisioning, inventory, security and management for private devices used for work functions, a trend usually dubbed "bring your own device" or BYOD. Aruba's software is meant to create it easier to securely manage a far additional varied shopper atmosphere, particularly in mobile deployments, and to provision secure network access, a feature missing from a minimum of another mobile device management (MDM) applications.

SECURITY MINEFIELD: 'Bring your own device' can bedevil IT security in 2012

ClearPass Policy Manager will be bought preloaded on a server appliance or as a VMware virtual machine instance. the appliance will work with the foremost mobile and computer operating systems within the enterprise: iOS, Android, BlackBerry OS, OS X and Windows seven. The new product combines code from 2 Aruba acquisitions, Amigopod, for guest access and management, and from last December, Avenda Systems, whose mobile management software is that the heart of Policy Manager.

Related Content The new giving includes the FreeRADIUS open supply software, for authentication, authorization and accounting, however the Policy Manager can also work with an existing AAA/RADIUS infrastructure.

Policy Manager consists of the core application, and 4 separately licensed modules: Onboard, a self-service mobile provisioning portal for employees; Profiler, that creates an in depth inventory of every device; OnGuard, that may be a Network Access management application, as well as the quarantine and cleanup of compromised devices; and Guest, for registering and managing guest access to the network.

One further cloud service, ClearPass QuickConnect, will automatically configure wired and wireless network settings for private devices.

The actual provisioning is about up prior to by IT directors operating with ClearPass Policy Manager, that lets them set a variety of policies for devices by device sort, OS, user teams and alternative variables.

Users then will register their devices for access on their own, via an online portal, and have them automatically configured for such enterprise-standard protections and services as 802.1x authentication, a VPN shopper, Exchange ActiveSync, and machine IDs or certificates. When users commit to log into the company network for the primary time, they are redirected to the portal, where an application wizard walks them through the configuration method. Once that happens, these personal devices become uniquely visible to IT.

"By provisioning the device and giving it a novel ID, it provides us a degree of management over it that we tend to would not have otherwise," says Robert Fenstermacher, director of product selling, for Aruba, Sunnyvale, Calif.

Since IT will see personal devices, it will centrally and immediately revoke access if a retardant is detected, for instance. Personal devices will be given restricted access and privileges, whereas traffic from executive-level devices will be given high priority. Policies for Android devices will be totally different from those for iOS devices.

Aruba claims that ClearPass Policy Manager will be five hundredth more cost-effective than a comparable deployment of Cisco's Cisco Identity Services Engine; and if ISE needs network infrastructure upgrades for network switches, WLAN controllers and access points, the comparative savings are even larger, in line with Fenstermacher.

The Guest management functions are based mostly on the Amigopod software. Most of the opposite functions are from the Avenda acquisition. Aruba software engineers are adding new code that integrates the 2 applications, which creates a replacement workflows for the varied self-service and administrative capabilities.

ClearPass Policy Manager are released in March. Pricing is on a per-user basis, and varies with the entire variety of users and their devices. in line with Aruba, 1,000 users averaging a pair of.5 devices, and a hundred guests, would yield a charge of $17 per user.

Aruba conjointly announced what it says is that the 1st technical certification for network engineers designed for the new challenges of personally owned devices within the enterprise. The Aruba Certified Solutions skilled (ACSP) course work includes subjects like "RF fundamentals, Wi-Fi style for top density shopper environments, secure authentication and encryption and mobile device provisioning for workers and guests," in line with the seller. The course is $1,500 per category, and can be offered beginning in March. additional data concerning these certifications is on the Aruba web site.

Hard drive supply issues weigh on Dell's Q4 earnings

2012-02-21T20:33:00.000-08:00

Dell's fourth-quarter earnings were weighed down by weak client laptop sales and by pricing and provide problems caused by the floods in Thailand, Dell said on Tuesday.

For the quarter ended Feb. 3, Dell reported a web profit before one-time charges of US$913 million, down ten % from identical quarter last year. Earnings per share were $0.51, compared to the consensus estimate of $0.52, in step with analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.

Dell was challenged by pricing and provide problems associated with exhausting drives, particularly in its client laptop business, said Brian Gladden, chief monetary officer at Dell, on a decision to debate the earnings with media. Dell received the provides it required however costs went up considerably throughout the quarter.

The costs of alternative parts like memory and LCDs were favorable and helped offset a number of the impact, Gladden said. however the corporate had problem securing enough high-capacity drives for its additional profitable, higher-end merchandise.

"The disruption in provide can continue into the third quarter," Gladden said.

Gladden provided the instance of the high-end XPS laptops, that are exhausting to sell with exhausting drives of solely 320GB. Overall, Dell absorbed roughly $150 million in prices associated with exhausting drive pricing problems, Gladden said.

"That played out across the portfolio," he said.

Dell's revenue for the quarter was $16 billion, growing by simply two % year over year. Analysts had expected revenue of $15.9 billion. together with one-time charges, web income was $764 million, an eighteen % drop compared to last year, and earnings per share were $0.43.

Revenue for the buyer section was $3.2 billion, down two %, Dell said. There was weak demand for client merchandise within the U.S., however revenue from alternative countries combined grew by ten %, Dell said.

Dell has been attempting to scale back its dependence on client PCs, where profit margins are lower, and expand in its higher-margin enterprise business.

Consumer merchandise accounted for concerning twenty % of Dell's revenue within the fourth quarter, down from twenty one % a year earlier. Enterprise revenue was thirty %, identical compared to last year.

Dell can still focus heavily on its enterprise business within the year ahead, Gladden said. It poured billions into analysis and development for server and information center merchandise last year and can still do therefore in fiscal 2013, he said.

Dell invested $2.6 billion in enterprise-related acquisitions in fiscal 2012, the business year that simply ended for Dell. They included networking company Force ten Networks, storage company Compellent and security company SecureWorks.

The company's enterprise business may receive a lift with the launch of the PowerEdge 12G line of servers within the current calendar quarter, said CEO Michael Dell. The servers can have Intel's upcoming Xeon E5 processors, based mostly on the new Romley platform, a long-awaited update to Intel's 5600 series processors announced in March 2010. Dell is hosting an incident in San Francisco Feb. twenty seven to announce new servers and alternative enterprise merchandise.

The servers can offer I/O enhancements through technologies like solid-state drives and 10-gigabit Ethernet, that may facilitate deploy virtualized machines faster. Dell is simplifying systems management within the servers and additionally integrating technologies from recent acquisitions like Force ten.

"We're changing the complete sale from being a private product to effectively selling the complete information center," Michael Dell said.

The company sees plenty of chance in software used to create cloud infrastructure and virtualize information centers, he said. the corporate earlier this month said it absolutely was forming a Software cluster, which is able to take charge of enterprise software offered in end-to-end merchandise. the corporate employed former CA CEO John Swainson to run the cluster.

For the primary fiscal quarter of 2013, Dell said it expects revenue to say no concerning seven % sequentially.

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2012-02-08T00:50:00.000-08:00

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HP Slate 500

2012-02-06T20:01:00.000-08:00

Hewlett-Packard unveils long-awaited Windows seven slate that may be retailed for US$799, to be formally introduced on Monday.

There are some leaks here and there, however currently we all know, primarily based on this HP document, that it's officially referred to as the HP Slate five hundred pill computer. As HP had said before, it comes with Windows seven and is geared toward company customers. We've listed all the specs below, however a number of those that popped out at us: it weighs simply one.5 pounds, has an 8.9-inch multitouch show and 2 cameras, and it takes input from a stylus, that they are calling the HP Slate Digital Pen.

Some additional detailed specs: The eight.9-inch LED-backlit show sports a one,024x600-pixel resolution. the five hundred comes with Windows seven skilled put in, a 1.86GHz Intel Atom Z540 processor, and a 64GB solid-state drive. conjointly inside: an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator five hundred, a mixture stereo headphone-microphone jack, a VGA (video graphics array) front-facing Webcam, a 3-megapixel camera on the rear, Bluetooth connectivity, and 802.11b/g/n wireless connectivity.

Input devices embody an optional keyboard and optical mouse, similarly because the HP Slate Digital Pen. The pill conjointly comes with Evernote, Adobe Reader, and Adobe Acrobat in-built, beside some HP-branded software.

HP dangles developer carrot with WebOS PCs

2012-02-06T20:00:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it's easier to compete by giving the world no option but to deal with you. By declaring its intention to use WebOS in its biggest selling and most well-known product line, Hewlett-Packard (HP) is doing just that.

Almost two hours into an event ostensibly scheduled to reveal HP's new smartphones along with the TouchPad tablet, HP Executive Vice President Todd Bradley dropped a bit of a stunner. HP has long said since acquiring Palm that it planned to use WebOS in a variety of devices, but until today few realized it intended to drive the software into its PC lineup.

"I'm excited to announce our plans to bring the WebOS to the device that has the biggest reach of all: the personal computer," Bradley said. And with that, many in the tech industry stopped wondering whether the TouchPad was really good enough to compete with the iPad and started wondering about how the world has been changed.

Already this year Microsoft has announced that Windows will run on ARM chips, which power the mobile world. And now HP is willing to risk alienating one of its oldest and closest partners by emphasizing its own software in hopes of creating a world in which software developers have no choice but to put WebOS near the top of their to-do lists.

If we were talking about just smartphones and tablets, it's not clear consumers and developers saw enough Wednesday to take such a step. Even after the event, vital details about the newest generation of WebOS smartphones and the company's first tablet are still glaringly scarce.

Perhaps most importantly, we have no idea how much the Veer, Pre 3, and TouchPad will cost. And besides that, shipping dates for the products were very vague, listed by the season rather than by the month and likely to arrive after next-generation products from Apple and from Google partners start to hit stores.

But HP has one very strong ace in the hole: the world's most popular PC brand. If HP does manage to ship PCs in volume with WebOS, those software developers will suddenly have a huge potential market to address with their applications. HP sold nearly 63 million PCs during 2010.

Of course, such a switch won't happen overnight and almost certainly won't involve numbers on that large a scale for quite some time, if ever. In a brief interview after HP's event, Phil McKinney, vice president and chief technology officer for HP's personal systems group, said it's likely that the first WebOS-based PCs will run WebOS atop Windows 7. He didn't rule out the prospect of WebOS-only PCs, but he had nothing in the way of even basic details to share.

All the hedging aside, the announcement sends a clear signal. As Fortune's Michael Copeland pointed out, HP doesn't think it needs to rely on Microsoft to sell PCs anymore.

Microsoft was polite in response to HP's event. "HP is a valued Microsoft partner, and we continue to work closely with them on many new products that bring great experiences to our mutual customers," the company said in a statement.

However, it was obvious after HP bought Palm for US$1.2 billion that it was moving away from Microsoft's mobile operating system road map. It just wasn't as clear that HP was prepared to slight Microsoft when it came to both companies' flagship products as well, and no matter what combination HP chooses to use of WebOS and Windows 7 on its PCs, few would be surprised if it promoted its own software rather prominently.

And that, in turn, may encourage more and more people to think about alternative PCs running WebOS that aren't quite tablets but don't look like your father's desktop tower either. An easy example would be HP's Touchsmart PC, which one could easily see running WebOS as a kitchen-counter computer or in the lobby of a design firm.

If it all works out, HP will have given software developers millions of reasons to take it seriously. To be clear, this is not a long-term strategy: PC growth is anemic, smartphones are already outshipping PCs, and tablet growth is expected by most people in this industry to soar over the next few years.

HP will have to be competitive in smartphones and tablets to remain a force in the personal computing market, and its development teams in those categories need to pick up the pace to even stay abreast of Apple and Google. Still, it will be hard for competitors to match HP's potential reach across the world's computing markets if WebOS tablets, smartphones, and PCs prove popular.

At some point there will no longer be enough software development energy to support six different mobile operating systems. If Nokia really does throw in the towel later this week and embrace Windows Phone 7, we'll be down to five.

WebOS has been an underdog in this fight for quite some time. But developers understand volume, and WebOS PCs could represent quite a lot of that.

Cisco NAC appliance secures enterprise networks

2012-01-04T22:21:00.000-08:00

More than two years into its Network Admission Control (NAC) infrastructure vision, Cisco Systems Inc. last week announced the addition of a new appliance to its NAC arsenal.
While it's not completely clear what impact Cisco's new NAC Appliance 4.0 will have on users, some industry analysts say an appliance-based approach to NAC could serve as a building block for a later framework rollout.

"They can get started with it now," Yankee Group vice president Zeus Kerravala said of companies that are considering NAC but are still teetering on the fence about deployment. "It can give them a taste of what it's like, and it lets them see the benefits."

For an NAC framework approach, users would have to go through a full router and switch upgrade, which is often costly, complex and time consuming. Though Kerravala said a framework approach is a better way to go, NAC alone can't justify a complete upgrade.

"If someone's running older routers and switches, NAC isn't going to be the sole reason for an upgrade," he said.

Simply put: An NAC framework is not a weekend road trip, it's a years-long journey and NAC 4.0 would be the gasoline.

Cisco NAC Appliance 4.0 is the latest incarnation of Clean Access. The upgrade provides policy enforcement at enterprise network entry points. Version 4.0 can be deployed in-line or out-of-band with network traffic at Layer 2, and it can be deployed out-of-band at Layer 3 to minimize the number of services required for multiple locations.

Apple, Microsoft consortium beats Google for Nortel patents

2011-12-28T19:12:00.000-08:00

Nortel Networks has auctioned off its remaining patents and patent applications to a consortium of key technology firms for a money purchase value of US$4.5 billion.

Google, that offered $900 million for the patents in April, wasn't among the winning bidders.

Nortel said in a very statement late Thursday that a consortium consisting of Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, analysis In Motion and Sony had emerged because the winning bidder within the multi-day auction. It failed to offer info on the opposite bidders.

"We believe the consortium is within the best position to utilize the patents in a very manner which will be favorable to the business long term", Ericsson said. the corporate said it'd contribute $340 million to the transaction that is anticipated to shut within the third quarter. RIM said its portion of the acquisition thought was regarding $770 million.

The sale includes quite half-dozen,000 patents and patent applications spanning wireless, wireless 4G, knowledge networking, optical, voice, Internet, service supplier, semiconductors and different patents, Nortel said.

The sale is subject to applicable Canadian and U.S. court approvals which is able to be sought at a joint hearing expected to be persisted July eleven, it added.

Nortel Networks said in April that it entered in into a "stalking horse" asset sale agreement with Google for the sale of all of its remaining patents and patent applications for a money purchase value of $900 million. The Google bid effectively set the minimum asking value in an auction for the assets.

In May, Nortel said that it obtained approval from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware and from the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to simply accept the bid from Google.

"This outcome is disappointing for anyone who believes that open innovation edges users and promotes creativity and competition," said Kent Walker, Google's senior vice chairman and general counsel in an e-mailed statement. "We can keep operating to scale back the present flood of patent litigation that hurts each innovators and customers."

In a blog post in April, Walker said Google was bidding for the Nortel patents because it hoped the portfolio would produce a disincentive for others to sue Google, and additionally facilitate the corporate, its partners and also the open supply community, that is integrally concerned in comes like Android and Chrome, still innovate. Having a formidable patent portfolio is one in all a company's best defenses against an explosion in patent litigation that threatens to stifle innovation, he added.

Nortel filed for cover beneath U.S. Chapter eleven bankruptcy proceedings in January 2009, and has been selling off its assets ever since. Ericsson paid simply over $1 billion for the company's CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) wireless division, whereas Avaya paid just below $1 billion for its enterprise networking business.

Google bids $900M for Nortel patent portfolio

2011-12-28T18:48:00.000-08:00

Google is bidding US$900 million in money for thousands of patents that Nortel can auction off as a part of its bankruptcy proceedings, the businesses said Monday.

The proposed deal is what is referred to as a "stalking horse" asset sale agreement, where the Google provide sets the minimum bar for different bidders for the portfolio of regarding half dozen,000 patents and patent applications, that cowl a broad vary of telecommunications, web search and social networking technologies.

Nortel expects the agreement to receive approval from U.S. and Canadian courts in June, when that the bidding can open for the intellectual property portfolio that "touches nearly each side of telecommunications," Nortel said during a statement.

The telecommunications technologies lined within the patent portfolio embrace wireless, 4G, knowledge networking, optical, voice, Internet, service supplier and semiconductors, Nortel said.

Meanwhile, Google said that it's bidding for the Nortel portfolio to defend itself against patent litigation and to spice up its technology innovation, specifically in its Android mobile platform and Chrome OS and browser.

"If successful, we have a tendency to hope this portfolio won't solely produce a disincentive for others to sue Google, however additionally facilitate us, our partners and therefore the open supply community -- that is integrally concerned in comes like Android and Chrome -- still innovate," Kent Walker, senior vp and general counsel, said during a blog post.

Cisco changes take time

2011-12-18T18:58:00.000-08:00

Cisco Systems' rumored job cuts of up to 10,000 globally are expected as the networking giant had warned earlier of impending cost-cutting measures, noted an industry watcher.

In an e-mail interview with ZDNet Asia, Ovum principal analyst Jens Butler said there would "not really" be any surprise if Cisco issues pink slips, as savings and restructuring were "on the cards" as indicated during its third quarter results announcements in May.

"Even though it posted slightly better-than-expected results for its fiscal third quarter ended Apr. 30, [Cisco] also issued lower-than-expected Q4 guidance and said it plans to cut expenses by US$1 billion by the end of the 2012 financial year," said Butler. "That will include reductions of both the employee and contractor workforce, although the company gave no details on how many people will lose their jobs."

Reports surfaced last week that the company has plans to axe as many as than 10,000 jobs. A Singapore-based Cisco spokesperson confirmed in an e-mail to ZDNet Asia that the job cuts were in line with the its announcements in May. He added that the company will share more details on the cost reductions, including layoffs, during its earnings call on Aug. 11.

According to Butler, the job cuts are part of Cisco's overall program which aims to build a company that is "simpler to deal with", is able to drive faster innovation and with simplified operations.

However, he noted that whether the changes will bring about increased profitability will be evident only after at least several quarters. "Such changes across such a larger and diversified organization are complex and will take time, given the levels and depths of stakeholders that need to be communicated with," he explained.

While the effects will not be visible in the immediate term, Butler said Cisco is refocusing and emphasizing on its core capabilities. The company is also specifically targeting areas it sees great potential, such as collaboration, data centers and virtualization and video, he added.

In a research note dated Jul. 13, Butler said Cisco's greater emphasis on its core competencies and cleaner engagement model with the multiple layers of its partner ecosystem shows the company is listening to and adapting to market dynamics "rather than attempting to force the market on its own". His observations were based on his attendance at the Cisco Live customer and partner event last week in Las Vegas.

Another industry watcher also welcomed Cisco's strategy change. In a blog post published last Friday, Forrester principal analyst Henry Dewing, who also attended the Cisco Live event, claimed that Cisco CEO John Chambers "has a clear vision of where Cisco needs to go and how to get there".

Dewing added Cisco "is sounding very much like a mature market leader as it balances risks and rewards in the rapidly changing markets for networking and collaboration".

New details emerge about Oracle's Social Network

2011-12-18T18:55:00.000-08:00

Further details on the new Oracle software Social Network came to light Thursday after the start of the product during OpenWorld conference earlier this month.

Oracle Social Network is part of the new range of corporate public cloud. It is considered a high-profile competitors operating from rivals like Salesforce.com Chatter and arrangement of the company specializing in social network provider in the market.

OSN is "part of a commitment to the audience much broader platform of" family-driven Oracle WebCenter technology, with the other pillars including websites, portals and content, said Andy Kershaw, Director senior product management, in a webcast Thursday.

Firms use collaboration tools today in a "very isolated" so he says. For example, start a conversation in an instant messaging program, but a party that can speak later by e-mail and someone who saved instead of a document in another system response.

"It will be incredibly difficult to understand over time how this decision was taken or the decision to share with others," he said.

SVO solves the problem by bringing real-time communication, content sharing, integration with other enterprise applications, the flow of activity and search tools, he said.

Overall, the goal is to provide a social network, "without a huge amount of noise," said Kershaw. "The greatest fear of all executive implementation is a social network that involves a lot of non-productive create noise. "

SVO will be available later in the calendar year 2012, Oracle said during the webcast. The cloud version will come later, first, to a question on the site.

The two options are generally similar, but there are some differences. "There are some features that make more sense on the site," said Kershaw. "The tight integration with telephony makes more sense than in the cloud."

OSN was first made available by the merger of new Oracle applications, but can be "absolutely" used by itself, and integrates with other applications and processes, Oracle said. OSN is a point that "sociability" of other enterprise applications, said Kershaw.

However, it is only compatible with Oracle databases.

In addition, users will be able to SVO without throwing their favorite tools to be adopted for cooperation, according to Kershaw.

"Today, Outlook is still the collaboration client of choice for many, many companies," he said. "We have a very sophisticated integration with Outlook that you fully and completely to work from Oracle Social Network can," he said.

Customers can also expect mobile applications for Android and Apple iPad and iPhone, he said.

One observer suggested a look at the OSN measured market opportunities.

"Since most buyers will be existing customers, social needs, which anchored at the process level, to succeed," said Ray Wang, CEO of Constellation Research, via e-mail. "As Oracle says that type of integration, activation appears to be superficial. On the positive side, Oracle customers expect enterprise functionality such as security, scalability and the integration. "

OSN is the last time the market was aimed Oracle Collaboration comes after InterOffice, Oracle Collaboration Suite and Beehive.

Beehive received a particularly high profile launch at Oracle OpenWorld conference in 2008, but since then seemed to gain some ground on the market.

Some users of products recently about his future in an official forum for Oracle speculated whether a version 2.1 available should not.

A spokeswoman for Oracle declined to comment to comment on this perspective.

Although not "Beehive in the cloud," OSN use certain technology works Beehive, Oracle confirmed during the webcast. But officials did not respond to a question whether OSN replace Beehive.

Cisco, Xerox join for mobile printing

2011-12-12T20:34:00.000-08:00

Cisco Systems has teamed up with Xerox to a mobile printing system that users can print from any device from anywhere on any printer to create.

The companies plan to make printing faster and easier for employees to move through routers and softswitches to make the process faster and safer. Cisco channel partners to sell technology and managed services provided by Xerox from a data center with Cisco UCS (Unified Computing System) servers, the company announced on Monday will arrive built.

With a portable printer, an employee can send a document from a smartphone device, tablet or other for a service that will make the document available to any printer within an organization. The employee can then go to one of these printers to punch in the code for the document and print it. This could overcome a problem with the widespread adoption of both mobile and desktop virtualization business caused, said analyst Rob Whiteley, Forrester Research. Printing is often overlooked, he said.

"The appetite to implement such changes is very high ... and then, here, things like print quickly become one of the things that are just not working hard, or they work but there must be some sort of complex issues to manage, "said Whiteley.

A typical print ad hoc method to obtain a document from a mobile device to send e-mail to someone who is sitting near a printer and print it, he said. In addition to being cumbersome and time consuming, it can circumvent corporate security on the viewing or saving a document.

To quit printing from mobile devices is increasingly important as more users of mobile phones and tablets, but the technology is still in its infancy, said Angele Boyd, an analyst at IDC.

"The infrastructure is not there today," said Boyd.

Xerox introduced a mobile printing system earlier this year, but left to companies or system integrators to deploy and configure. Other vendors, including Cisco rival Hewlett-Packard, have also introduced such systems. The idea behind the partnership between Xerox and Cisco provides the network in the image.

The company prints agents in Cisco routers and switches to build, starting with the ISR (Integrated Services Router), designed the popular multi-purpose router for small businesses and branch offices. They will also help Cisco WAN network acceleration products to travel faster print jobs and Cisco security tools to provide information not found in the wrong hands, the company said.

The technology does not require a Cisco network from end to end, the company said. In the future, Xerox wants to work with printers from other manufacturers of printers and outside own organization of the user, as seen in the office with a client.

Cisco and Xerox will provide printing features three mobile products. Xerox Managed Print Services (MPS) on Cisco Borderless Networks is a software product from Xerox that offers tools for companies to implement mobile printing services for their employees. The software has the advantage of IOS (Internetwork Operating System) provides network equipment Cisco, security, WAN optimization and pressure monitoring for mobile printing. Cisco channel partners will also be able to use Xerox MPS to provide these services to businesses. Xerox MPS should be offered by Cisco channel partners in the United States in July or August and Europe in January.

Xerox Cloud ITO Services is a set of services, including mobile printing, Xerox will offer companies and small businesses. Xerox services to move from the acquisition of ACS in the past year. They will run on Xerox data centers built with Cisco UCS (Unified Computing System) server and infrastructure Vblock made from Cisco networking and computing, EMC storage and VMware virtualization software. These services will also be sold by the Cisco channel. They are available from a limited and may be generally available in January next year, the company said.

It is also customer specific software for the Cisco Cius tablet and businesses for their virtualization Cisco devices Experience Client residing on the corporate desktop and can have a virtual desktop for users to write there. Users Xerox Mobile Print Solution can ensure that clients print documents on any printer in the company. The software will be available as soon as the Cius starts May 31

Cisco posts small revenue gain

2011-12-12T20:32:00.000-08:00

Cisco Systems has completed most of a major restructuring that began early this year, and on Wednesday posted revenue and profit for its fiscal first quarter that exceeded analysts' expectations.

For the quarter ended Oct. 29, Cisco reported revenue of US$11.3 billion, up 4.7 percent from a year earlier, and net income of $1.8 billion or $0.33 per share. Earnings per share fell 2.9 percent from the year earlier.

Not counting certain one-time items, Cisco had net income of $2.3 billion or $0.43. The results were in line with the consensus of expectations from analysts polled by Thomson Financial, who forecast earnings of $0.39 per share on revenue of $11.02 billion.

The report was the first since Ciscoset a new long-term growth forecast at a financial analyst conference in September. The company now expects between 5 percent and 7 percent annual revenue gains over the next three years, following several quarters of disappointing results and a major reorganization. It expects earnings per share to increase between 7 percent and 9 percent per year.

In a press release on Wednesday, CEO John Chambers said a majority of the company's reorganization was complete.

In its fiscal fourth-quarter report released in August, Cisco had posted a drop of more than one third in net income and an increase of only 3.3 percent in revenue from the year-earlier quarter.

Since early this year, the company has moved to sharpen its focus on five key areas of its business; core routing and switching, collaboration, data-center virtualization, video, and tying these elements together in an overall architecture.