Wipro is evaluating options to sell data centers

India's third biggest software exporter Wipro is evaluating options to sell data centers and other computer hardware assets of its US subsidiary Infocrossing to unlock value from what the company now calls 'non-core' business.

Wipro has already received initial offers from several medium to large US telcos, and the company is deliberating to carve out five data centres owned by Infocrossing for a potential sale estimated to be worth anywhere between $300 million and $400 million.

Wipro’s thought process –

·         This part of Infocrossing (datacenters) is not a game changer over next three-five years.

·         The idea is more about unlocking value from non-strategic part than giving up the entire Infocrossing unit.

·         Customers do not make decisions based on whether a vendor owns datacenters or not.

-Cheers

Indian IT sector - tighten the belt

Are we moving towards another recession?

The global economic developments after Standard & Poor's (S&P) downgraded the U.S. credit rating, point towards the advent of a global economic meltdown. S&P for the first-time downgraded its long-term sovereign credit rating on the U.S. from 'AAA' to 'AA+' and kept a negative outlook.

The debt ceiling could not prevent the S&P downgrading. The historical downgrading also worsened the word economy which is already on the brink of a recession driven by the weakened U.S. financial recovery and the debt-ridden European economy.

While the debt crisis is likely to hit banking, manufacturing, real-estate and pharmaceutical sectors in the U.S., the crisis is said to cause impact to IT Sector and sectors depending on exports.

It will also result in less capital flow to the Indian economy and capital markets may face more volatility head.

Indian IT sector has also started tightening the belt and getting ready to respond to this unprecedented situation.

-Cheers

Enterprise-class cloud-based data protection : Vaultize

Vaultize  from Anoosmar Tech is an enterprise-class cloud-based data protection that not only provide all the benefits of a typical cloud-based backup over traditional on-premise backup, but also provides numerous other benefits making it superior to any plain cloud-based backup solution.

Vaultize provides flexibility to enterprises in terms of deployment and how to store their data.

·         Cloud — they can choose to deploy Vaultize ―as-is— with no or little modifications — using the secure, scalable and reliable Vaultize cloud

·         Cloud option

·         Cloud Provider — they can choose cloud provider (e.g. AWS, Rackspace) which can be different from Vaultize’s preferred provider

·         Cloud Location — they can choose geographical location of cloud storage from many locations

·         Cloud Storage — they can choose to completely control storage whether it is in Vaultize cloud or cloud of its own

·         Virtual Private Cloud — they can choose to a deployment where the server and storage are dedicated to them and are completely isolated from other customers by making a virtual private cloud

·         On-premise/Hybrid

·         Private Cloud — they can choose to deploy Vaultize within a private cloud that would combine the benefits of high-speed on-premise backup with the advanced features of Vaultize

·         Appliance — they can choose to deploy Vaultize appliance to backup the data which otherwise cannot be moved to cloud for compliance to regulations or legal requirements.

Vaultize pricing is very simple: you pay just a flat fee per GB of backup storage.

·         NO Tier-based charging

·         NO Licensing cost — No additional fee for every device/user in your organization

·         NO Quota per user

-Cheers

Key cloud roadblock – Fear of Change

Key findings from a Study  –

Key cloud roadblock –  Fear of Change

·         Fear of change tends to be underestimated when companies decide to mix things up and take new approaches to tried-and-true ways of doing things. It's not just changing what people do all day in terms of how they use software, like moving to SaaS, but it's also about infrastructure and about application developers and how they think about developing an application.

·         Additional cloud roadblocks

o   Up-front costs

o    Security

Justification for cloud implementation on the other hand still remains the same-

·         Cost reduction

·         Increased flexibility/scalability

·         Reduced complexity

Again as discussed earlier in previous blog- Majority have virtualized their cloud servers, but few have implemented the Core management, Automation and Orchestration or Self-service functionality to use the cloud to its full potential.

-Cheers

High and automated Virtulization is same as Private Cloud?

Many companies have  implemented virtualization in various shapes and forms into existing computing environment.

They have followed the path of standardization of environments, Consolidating servers and datacenters, implementing Virtual servers for Development and Test and DR environments, implementing Virtualization for Production as P2V etc.  are all benefits of having virtualization.

Some also run highly virtualized IT with automation provided by system management solutions. One can imagine that many have already reaped the benefits of virtualization including increased utilization of servers, power savings, reduced server footprint, etc.

The question now comes up - “Is High Virtualization the same as Private Cloud?” or “We are already running a highly virtualized computing today, do we still need private cloud?”

And in many scenarios the answer is  still YES. And it really depends on if the attributes delivered by private cloud are in place already or still needed. This point is that virtualization and private cloud are not the same! There is no question that virtualization is an enabler.

Private cloud is a cloud dedicated to an organization. On premises or hosted by a 3^rd party, private cloud must exhibit the characteristics of cloud computing -  else it is not the CLOUD.  

Specifically, private cloud is expected to deliver 3 key attributes: Automation, Elasticity, and Self-service to differentiate itself from a highly virtualized or automated environment.

You will notice that I do not include ubiquitous access and pay-as-you-go model as key attributes for Private Cloud. These two are not considered as essential due to: for private cloud IT may want more control, instead of allowing ubiquitous access; and the pay-as-you-go or charge-back model simply may not be feasible to implement in an organization.

Without having virtualization in place, cloud will be more a concept than an implementable solution. Nonetheless, without self-service and automatic deployment, it may become cost-prohibitive to implement private cloud. These 3 key attributes convert a virtualization solution into a cloud setting.

-Cheers

IT Companies redraw strategy -

Cognizant –

The U.S. environment post-resolution of debt crisis may push the IT (information technology) companies to look at productivity and investment with a sense of purpose, seriousness and long-term outlook.

The situation as it was evolving would force clients to look for options that give them more for less. Clients invariably worked hard to drive efficiency when chips were down. Still, they needed to support their businesses. Consequently, he felt, clients had to necessarily invest in IT. The challenge lay in discovering - what else can be offered to them. Cognizant had to stay invested in creating newer capacities and offer innovative solutions if it were to increase its business prospects. In this context, it is justified the position taken by Cognizant to keep the operating margin within a 19-20 per cent band and reinvest the balance money.

The emerging environment in the wake of developments especially in the U.S. would force IT companies to work relentlessly on ways to become nimbler, flexible and adaptable. Cognizant would have to expend its energies on re-working utilization levels with newly-defined bench strength, fine-tuning the hiring process and driving resource efficiency in delivery models.

On the rising concerns across the globe over protecting local jobs - IT companies had to make adjustments on this score. Cognizant had gone in for campus recruitments in the U.S. and Europe. We are hiring in every geographical location. We want to be a local service provider to local clients.

Infosys Senior executives –

Maintained their revenue outlook, saying full-year fiscal revenues could grow 18-20 percent to between $7.13 billion and $7.25 billion, which analysts and investors had expected to be higher.

The economic environment is still volatile. All the large markets are seeing problems like high unemployment and inflation, low growth and huge fiscal deficits.
Clients have become cautious, as the sovereign (debt) crisis in Europe has become bigger.

-Cheers

PS: Cheper, Better, Faster...!

Riverbed’s asymmetric optimization strategy

Riverbed Technology has acquired Aptimize Limited & Zeus Technology

The acquisitions of the two companies will form the cornerstone of Riverbed’s asymmetric optimization strategy.

Aptimize's web content optimization is an innovative new technology area that allows customers to deliver both internal web applications, like SharePoint, and external web applications, like e-commerce websites, much faster. The Aptimize Website Accelerator eliminates massive inefficiencies in modern web applications by effectively transforming the content (javascript, cascading style sheets, images, etc.) in real time—instantly accelerating websites or intranets with a simple software installation on the Web server.

No extra hardware, code or browser changes are needed. Organizations that deploy the Aptimize solution have accelerated performance up to 400%. The Aptimize solution is often deployed in tandem with wide area network (WAN) optimization controllers and application delivery controllers (ADCs) to enhance performance.  

Aptimize goes beyond HTTP and TCP optimization and Web content optimization by transforming web content for faster delivery and a more responsive user experience. Aptimize’s technology reorders, merges and resizes content according to who is viewing it and from where. The end result is the application is delivered more effectively—up to four times faster—regardless of the platform used.

Zeus has a suite of application-acceleration and application-management products that fall under its Elastic Application Delivery umbrella, including a very popular load balancer. Leading cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Rackspace and Joyent all utilize Zeus’ technology to boost performance for their clouds.

Zeus approached product development differently by architecting a software-based [application delivery controller]. As a software-based solution, the Zeus vADC has many advantages over its hardware-originated peers: it is better suited for virtual and cloud environments, it can migrate across environments, and it can scale on demand.

Zeus really brings is the ability to accelerate new types of asymmetric applications, such as e-commerce or other customer-serving web applications. They’re called asymmetric because there aren’t appliances like Riverbed’s Steelhead appliance at both ends to boost performance, which means all the work is done on the application provider’s end.

Riverbed’s main competition are — Cisco and Citrix, primarily — although it has added F5 Networks on the ADC front. Greater market consolidation is expected to follow the Riverbed’s big play, as there are startups like Aryaka* and Infineta waiting in the wings with interesting technologies.

And Cisco, of course, could buy Citrix and/or F5 as it looks to reorganize around its strengths.

*Part of My watch list from last year…!

-Cheers

Low Cost IT will prevail...

As America's top outsourcing customers aim to restore profits amid rising oil prices and weak consumer demand, they are asking Indian IT tech firms to do more with less -


Billing rates for back office, software development, Remote Infrastructure Managment  and maintenance projects are already down by up to 15%.


Over the past few months US retailers Walmart and Home Depot , apart from Cisco , Ericsson and insurance firm AIG , have cut rates that could see profit margins for top tier IT companies like TCS , Infosys & Wipro and others fall by 1-3 % this quarter.


Also see September blog - We saw this coming almost 9 monts back ....
http://itservice-aj.blogspot.com/2010/09/low-cost-it-price-hike.html


-Cheers

2010-2011 State of SMB Cloud Services Market

Cloud-based SMB solutions for Business Intelligence & Analytics and Mobile IT will become more available and such investments will become increasingly important –

AMI-Partners.

SaaS bundled options for BI and analytics will increase by 25% annually through 2015 to reach $500 million.

1.    SMBs are becoming more aware of the benefits of mining their data for insights that can result in savings and competitive advantage.

2.    The availability of BI/SaaS, as part of a larger bundle, makes it a very attractive and cost-effective proposition.

There is increased interest in BI/analytics solutions bundled with cloud infrastructure, or infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and unified communications (UC) offerings.

Interest in application access, collaboration and cloud computing among SMBs is also increasing because of the ubiquity of broadband, mobility and smart devices. Cloud will also spur rapid adoption of mobile solutions.

In its 2010-2011 State of SMB Cloud Services Market, AMI-Partners found nearly two thirds of SMBs equip their employees with smart phones for business purposes, and tablet computers are also experiencing very rapid uptake. Some 8% of SMBs plan to purchase over 1.5 million tablets for their businesses in the next 12 months, the study found. Collaborative working services such as hosted document sharing and UC (conferencing, messaging and presence) are provoking the highest level of future interest.

The phenomenal expansion of mobile devices in the consumer world is having its effect on the SMB workplace. Users now want to take the things they can do in their private lives into their professional working practices: for example, accessing email, simple internet apps and social networking sites, or checking availability of colleagues – and to do so wherever and whenever they need to.

The cloud model’s flexible payment model (pay per user per month) makes access to technology affordable for resource-constrained small and medium businesses. Cloud also makes it faster and easier for SMBs to implement new technologies, including mobile, which is important as 70% of SMBs have no dedicated IT staff resources.

-Cheers 

Storage Virtulization

Hitachi TrueNorth Specialization Program

Qualified participants in the Hitachi TrueNorth Partner Program can now leverage a combination of specializations to provide customized services and solutions to their customers in the areas of:

Virtualization Services Specialization – builds partners’ knowledge and capabilities in solving customers’ virtualization implementation challenges of any size. Enables partners to better utilize Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP), the industry’s leading storage virtualization platform, to extend their customers’ existing storage assets and provide significant cost savings.

Migration Services Specialization – prepares partners to engage in migration planning and implementation by leveraging the virtualization and tiering capabilities of Hitachi VSP. Only HDS migration solutions allow for migration at the storage level between heterogeneous storage subsystems. With certification, partners can plan and design a solution that migrates their customers’ data quickly with minimal risk.

File and Content Services Specialization – enables partners to identify, design and implement storage solutions for their customers’ unstructured data. Certified partners can add services in Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) enablement, NAS enablement and data discovery with Hitachi Data Discovery Suite (HDDS).

Application Specialization and Vertical Solutions – leveraging the Services Specializations and HDS reference architectures that have been tested and proven in HDS labs, partners can add their own unique components to deliver differentiated, low risk and flexible application and vertical solutions to customers.

These solutions combine the company’s best practices with Hitachi Technology Alliance Program applications including Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Symantec and VMware among others, to give partners in industries like health and life sciences, government, and communications, media and entertainment a wide range of potential solutions for diverse customer environments.

As IT environments continue to become increasingly more complex, customers are looking for their primary solution provider to deliver a comprehensive portfolio of services to help them better architect, implement and manage IT resources. Adding specific specializations and new vertical market solutions to the Hitachi TrueNorth Partner Program gives our partners greater levels of flexibility to offer custom and advanced services that will significantly expand their trusted advisor status with customers.

-Cheers

CIO: How to be a CSP - Cloud Service Provider

Looking at what the public cloud providers offer and how they operate is instructive and serves as a model for the CIO as CSP.

What are the core competencies that need to be in place to operate as a CSP?

Well, first there are the basics:

Consumer self-service Consumers of IT resources must be able to self-service with no need to interact with another human as part of the resource request. To achieve this usually  web interface with a service catalog of pre-packaged resources is used. This definitely does not mean sending an email off to a help desk requesting that a virtual machine be created on the requester's behalf.

Application abstraction from specific infrastructure. CSPs offer computing capability not specific hardware resources. To put it another way, the virtual machine provided via self-service may migrate around the cloud infrastructure, with no implied promise that it will reside on specific hardware.

Infrastructure funding separate from applications. Many CIOs "play the game" of getting funding for necessary infrastructure spending by tying it to specific application initiatives. Being a CSP means having a generalized pool of resources that applications use but are not tied to; Therefore funding for the infrastructure must be handled separately from application initiatives. Beyond this, one might observe that the overall level of infrastructure spend is likely to increase significantly.

Beyond the basics - The next set of implications are far more revolutionary and challenging for an IT organization, but getting them wrong will result in a failed initiative and a forced march to an external cloud provider.

More in Part II

-Cheers

Cloud Experience Center - EAST

EMC Corporation extended its collaboration with Cisco by jointly launching their Cloud Experience Centers in India today. This is a first-of-its-kind collaboration with EMC Center of Excellence and the Cisco Globalization Center East, creating a lab that provides Indian customers with an opportunity to experience the benefits and reliability of cloud-based IT infrastructure.

The Cloud Experience Centers aim to accelerate customers’ transition to an agile cloud-based infrastructure by enabling proof-of-concepts and helping them experience innovative solutions to some of their critical business challenges. The lab established is a live test bed for customers to come in and validate their business cases in a live environment.

The cloud experience centers in Bangalore will help customers address their concerns related to cloud deployment and evolve their business thereby helping drive greater business impact.

In addition, EMC and Cisco will work together to engineer solutions for the Indian market. These would include reference architectures which can be tested for reliability, security and scale, as well as cross training for engineers and partners on their respective technologies and solutions.

-Cheers

Migration to Cloud strategies - Gartner

Rehost, i.e. redeploy applications to a different hardware environment and change the application’s infrastructure configuration. Rehosting an application without making changes to its architecture can provide a fast cloud migration solution. However, the primary advantage of IaaS, that - teams can migrate systems quickly, without modifying their architecture – can be its primary disadvantage as benefits from the cloud characteristics of the infrastructure, such as scalability, will be missed.

Refactor, i.e. run applications on a cloud provider’s infrastructure. The primary advantage is blending familiarity with innovation as “backward-compatible” PaaS means developers can reuse languages, frameworks, and containers they have invested in, thus leveraging code the organization considers strategic. Disadvantages include missing capabilities, transitive risk, and framework lock-in. At this early stage in the PaaS market, some of the capabilities developers depend on with existing platforms can be missing from PaaS offerings.

Revise, i.e. modify or extend the existing code base to support legacy modernization requirements, then use rehost or refactor options to deploy to cloud. This option allows organizations to optimize the application to leverage the cloud characteristics of providers' infrastructure. The downside is that kicking off a (possibly major) development project will require upfront expenses to mobilize a development team. Depending on the scale of the revision, revise is the option likely to take most time to deliver its capabilities.

Rebuild, i.e. Rebuild the solution on PaaS, discard code for an existing application and re-architect the application. Although rebuilding requires losing the familiarity of existing code and frameworks, the advantage of rebuilding an application is access to innovative features in the provider's platform. They improve developer productivity, such as tools that allow application templates and data models to be customized, metadata-driven engines, and communities that supply pre-built components. However, lock-in is the primary disadvantage so if the provider makes a pricing or technical change that the consumer cannot accept, breaches service level agreements (SLAs), or fails, the consumer is forced to switch, potentially abandoning some or all of its application assets.

Replace, i.e. discard an existing application (or set of applications) and use commercial software delivered as a service. This option avoids investment in mobilizing a development team when requirements for a business function change quickly. Disadvantages can include inconsistent data semantics, data access issues, and vendor lock-in.

-Cheers

Dell’s cloud Investment details

All-in-one infrastructure

vStart is a Dell’s take at a converged infrastructure system almost like Cisco’s Unified Computing System, HP’s BladeSystem Matrix or IBM’s CloudBurst. vStart has compute, storage, networking and management software into a single unit, and comes preloaded with VMware’s ESXi hypervisor. Dell’s goal is to give customers a product that is ready to run right out of the box with no complex assembly required.

New cloud data centers

When Dell started building large data centers and rumors had been swirling for quite a while about it wanting to buy Rackspace. Now we have the official announcement: Dell will build multiple data centers to offer IaaS, PaaS and storage as a service. Dell will offer a PaaS service based on Microsoft Windows Azure and it’s possible that Dell’s IaaS and storage services will be based on the OpenStack platform. Dell is an OpenStack project member.

New Solution Centers Provide Blueprints for the Future

Dell will open 12 Global Solution Centers this year and is planning 10 more over the next 18 months, to better bring open, capable and affordable solutions to organizations around the world. This global network of solution centers will provide a backdrop for customers to learn about Dell’s industry-focused solutions and domain expertise.

These are all big steps for Dell, which until now has been building its cloud computing identity through software products and partnerships to add value to Dell’s servers and through some highly dense PowerEdge servers designed for cloud data centers. With vStart and the promise of cloud services, Dell is showing that it wants to finally shake its commodity-box-maker image and hang with the big boys.

-Cheers

Citrix’ pushes Personal Cloud

Citrix' wants to make all data and applications available to users on any device, without threatening IT security. The PC era, which replaced the mainframe era, is now being replaced by the cloud era, and each user will have a ‘personal cloud’!

A personal cloud is something that is much bigger than just a Windows desktop. It's the way people want to work, from any location, at any time, on any device, with everything they need to be successful.

Two new Citrix Netscaler technologies:

• Cloud Gateway, to be available in physical and virtual appliances, sits at the "front door" of the data center, connecting Web applications and Windows apps to any device in a secure manner, while providing single sign-on to users. The Gateway will also monitor a customer's licenses and service-level agreements.

• Cloud Bridge, a companion piece, sits at the "back door" of the network to provide a secure connection between the data center and cloud services. WAN optimization improves data flow and reduces use of bandwidth, and lets you split up the components of an application between data center and cloud. E.g. a customer could run most of an application in a cloud service but keep Active Directory and sensitive data in-house for security reasons.

-Cheers

AT&T’s Billion $$ for Cloud & Mobility Solutions

After Verizon’s Terremark acquisition for more than a billion dollar and Dell’s announcement for investing billion dollar in Cloud and Datacenter, Now its AT&T’s Billion $$ for Cloud & Mobility Solutions

AT&T's 2011 investment priorities include:

Advanced Mobility Solutions and Connected Devices: In 1Q 2011, AT&T added 1.6 million emerging devices. More than 12 million emerging devices are now connected to the AT&T network. AT&T has seen the use of mobile applications triple since 2009.

Cloud Based and Emerging Services: AT&T has embedded cloud capabilities directly into its network so that the company can manage and deliver services and applications as part of a total solution to any device. These services offer customers tremendous flexibility and shared economics for their compute and storage needs – and are all protected by AT&T's industry-leading network-based security solutions.

Global Enterprise Networking: AT&T has invested in business-focused networks, systems and applications to provide a globally consistent set of robust and highly-secure services for target multinational customers.

Small Business Services: To serve its more than $3m SMB business customers in the U.S., AT&T is continuing to invest in delivering new and simplified service bundles and increasing download speeds within its existing 22- state broadband footprint.

-Cheers

Microsoft-Cisco-Netapps : Private cloud

NetApp Simplifies Customers’ Transition to Private Cloud : Solution Enables Advanced Management and Service Automation.

Validated through the Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track program, the NetApp Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track with Cisco data center architecture design helps customers reduce infrastructure and application deployment time from days to hours while helping them achieve greater utilization of their physical and virtual resource pools.

The NetApp Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track with Cisco data center architecture design uses Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V R2 and Microsoft System Center, a common management platform to help ease management and enable automation and self-service provisioning of the entire private cloud infrastructure, including features such as automated self-service provisioning via native Opalis Integration Packs.

Built on a flexible, shared infrastructure, the NetApp Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track with Cisco design is a tested data center architecture that can scale vertically or horizontally.

-Cheers

IT department 2.0

IT department 2.0: How do they handle Cloud, Mobile, Social and other empowered technologies and business demands?

Forrester empowered IT agenda,

IT needs to adapt to a new ‘empowered’ era, where customers have more information available to them than ever before, and employees are bringing new technologies into the business first.

Diversity is generally bad for productivity. There has to be a constant evaluation of technology. IT has to be pragmatic about the trade-off between diversity and uniformity.

Accenture believes that a new type of IT department will evolve, to become the "IT department 2.0".

You're going to have business-oriented IT people able to deliver services within hours rather than years, and managing many services. The skills they learned in doing outsourcing will be very applicable to cloud service management.

-Cheers

TATA's cloud Services in India for SMB

TATA’s iON SMB Cloud –

Easy way to convert from hosting and software services provider to Cloud Services Provider.

An user of cloud computing service does not have to purchase hardware or software for his IT related need but is provided by the service provider and is charged factional amount of the cost for the using hardware or the software on pay per use basis.

TATA’s iON service is available on pay-per-use business model. The service offers business IT solutions like HR, finance, inventory, domain-based ERP solutions as well as basic applications like email, document management and webhosting services.

iON is pre-configured with hardware, network and software bundled together and backed by business, technical and consulting services. Current industry solutions available are for manufacturing, textiles, education, retail, quick service restaurants, wellness and professional services industry.

-Cheers

After HP now its IBM and Dell - More investments in Cloud

Dell has announced it is increasing its investments in new technology solutions and services that will help customers innovate and drive business results in the Virtual Era. In its current fiscal year, Dell will invest $1 billion (USD) to deliver leading solutions, services and cloud-based delivery options.

"Technology advances, delivery methods and the move to disruptive IT models like cloud are changing the fundamental way businesses operate," said Steve Schuckenbrock, President, Dell Services. "With this transformational shift, businesses are gaining benefits in terms of speed to market and organizational and compute flexibility.

April 2011

Suresh Vaswani, until recently the co-CEO of Wipro’s IT business and an executive director on the board of Wipro Ltd, has joined as Chairman-Dell India, and as EVP-Dell Services, leading its Applications and BPO organization. He will report to Steve Schuckenbrock, President-Dell Services.

March 2011

Dell's business in India is approaching the $2-billion revenue milestone. Dell is upbeat about “unbelievable” opportunities posed by India — a market where it hopes to add a few thousands to its current 23,000 headcount over the coming year.

-Cheers

Wall Street pundits on Cisco

It is too big to be taken over – Spin off is the way to go –

Chambers should start by immediately selling off some of his consumer businesses, which represent 10% of all its sales. They simply don't make sense for a company's whose main business is computer switching and other networking functions.

Citigroup's John Slack, in a note last week reiterating a Hold rating on the stock, suggested that selling off all of Cisco's consumer businesses, including its Linksys line of low-cost routers, would boost the remaining revenue growth rate by almost one percentage point and lift operating profit by one to two points.

Chambers should also consider retrenching from some of the other 30 new businesses Cisco has entered in recent years, said Joanna Makris, an analyst at Mizuho Securities USA Inc. in New York. These include niche products that help companies manage data centers -- areas led by Riverbed Technology Inc.,  F5 Networks Inc.  and Aruba Networks Inc.

“Cisco has to give up the ghost at this point. They’ve lost so much share and thought leadership. It’s too late to out-innovate other companies in these areas.”

-Cheers

Short version of John Chamber’s memo to Cisco employees –

First, as always, let's start with our customers. I've spent significant time recently reaching out to many of them around the world. I've had extremely candid conversations about why they buy Cisco, why they don't, and what they think we do best. These conversations reinforce what I have known to be true about Cisco: our customers believe we are a company of passionate people that take time to imagine what's possible, and to do what it takes to make them successful.

I've also solicited very direct feedback from many of you -- You are telling me that there is a reason you are at Cisco -- our culture, our values, our vision. You've also made it very clear that we must make it simpler to do the work we love to do, and to accelerate the impact we know we are making for our customers.

It is clear to me that we have incredible foundational strengths -- our people, our relationships, our innovation and our strategy to extend the role of the network. We have anticipated market transitions and made good decisions in capturing them. We are disrupting the data center space. We are redefining the collaboration market.

Many say that in the face of this expansion, Cisco needs more discipline. I agree.

We will work on a very simple set of guiding principles:

1. We will not fix what's not broken. There are numerous areas where we're executing incredibly well for our customers and partners. In these areas, you will see no disruption and you will see nothing less than support and empowerment. Simply put, we will not get in the way of our success.

2. We will take bold steps and we will make tough decisions. With change comes disruption, and you will see this necessary and healthy disruption as we make meaningful decisions in a timely, targeted and measurable way. We will address with surgical precision what we need to fix in our portfolio and what we need to better enable.

3. We will accelerate our leadership across our priorities and compete to win in the core. Again, our strategy to extend the role of the network will not change. Our approach to leadership in the core amidst this transition will change.

4. We will make it easier for you to work at Cisco, as we make it easier for our customers and partners to work with Cisco. We will simplify the way we work and how we focus our attention and resources. We will significantly rework our systems, tools and funding models to do this. We will reshape the operational foundation in order to empower our teams, integrate our major functions, and allow our people to focus on inspiring and important work.

We are all responsible for driving operational excellence across Cisco. As you'd expect, I'm asking each of you to play your part in this transition. The responsibility does not fall on one leader or one team. It will not be easy and I expect your participation, flexibility and feedback along the way.

A company that knows how to win and intends to continue that track record. A company that's taking the network where it needs to be, with focus. And at a place that puts people, customers and communities at the core of its values. That's Cisco, no excuses.

Thank you for being part of Cisco. You have my commitment, my respect and my appreciation. Let's define and win this transition together. This is our start.

-Cheers