UPDATED 13:32 EST / APRIL 06 2011

Cisco: A Year in Review.

The past few months have been really dynamic for the giant cloud company, Cisco. Be it in terms of ups and downs, new product releases, milestones and achievements; we have seen and covered lots of things. Just yesterday,  Cisco’s CEO John Chambers issued a memo to his employees. Following the bumpy months of this past year, Chambers admitted that the company has lost its focus, lacks discipline and needs to overhaul its operations.

Here’s a glimpse of the Email that Chambers sent out to his staff members,

“Cisco is a great company – we have much to be proud of, and much to look forward to. That said, today we face a simple truth: we have disappointed our investors and we have confused our employees. Bottom line, we have lost some of the credibility that is foundational to Cisco’s success – and we must earn it back. Our market is in transition, and our company is in transition. And the time is right to define this transition for ourselves and our industry. I understand this. It’s time for focus. We now need to prepare ourselves for what’s next, as you will see Cisco make a number of targeted moves in the coming weeks and as we move into FY12.”

The company has been going through a few dire situations lately. Besides seeing the disappointing results of last two quarters, Cisco was also sued by one of its investors, who claims that Cisco violated the Federal Securities Laws.

Okay, moving on to the positive side, the giant cloud company also made several significant developments, one out of which involves its expansion to India. Back in March, it signed a global partnership agreement with Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., a part of the $7.1 billion Mahindra group to offer virtual dealerships and cloud computing services in smart cities, and sports and entertainment. Both companies invested around $2.2 million in the joint venture that involves development of a tech park for which Mahindra will provide the physical infrastructure and Cisco will provide the software.

In the same month it also acquired Pari Networks, a provider of network configuration and change management (NCCM) solution, as well as compliance management offerings. While the terms of acquisition were not disclosed by the company, we heard it saying that Pari Networks’ technology will integrate into Cisco’s smart services and it will also bring an industry-leading team of engineers.

Cisco also announced its plans of acquiring newScale, software provider delivering self-service portals for IT organizations, to select and deploy cloud services for their business. It seems that Cisco has been fast on acquisitions and buying to speed up its strategy implementation.

The company also launched an overhauled version of its data center portfolio including switches, servers, software and storage networking protocols. Cisco also added FCoE support into the core Nexus 7000 Ethernet and now supports end-to-end FCoE for their high-end enterprise switch offerings.

Recently, it also revealed the expanded Linksys 802.11n routers, riding the next wave in the market. This will provide a great deal of robustness to homes looking for stronger, cleaner signals in order to play streaming video over.

“With more than 70 million routers sold, Linksys brings a decade of leadership and innovation to create products that consumers trust for the best wireless quality, performance and experience,” said Simon Fleming-Wood, vice president of marketing, Cisco Consumer Products. “Our new Linksys line offers an array of solutions for the needs of today’s home networking consumer and is optimized for premium video experiences such as those available through Netflix, Hulu, and iTunes.”

Of course, this is in line with Cisco’s understanding of the market and a push deeper into video telecommunications.  This area is central to Cisco’s consumer product front, and remains an integral part of what the company struggles with in today’s rapidly evolving market.  As Chambers gears up for a major overhaul, Cisco’s reputation is on the line.  Below is an infographic from 2009, a sure reflection of the company structure that will be studied and revamped in the coming months.


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