Stories by: Paul Roberts

Aspiring entrepreneurs can only dream about a track record like Selina Lo's. First there was Centillion, a networking startup that Lo co-founded, and Bay Networks purchased for US$100 million in 1994. Lo's next act was Alteon, a maker of Gigabit Ethernet adapters that Lo joined in 1996 and transformed into Alteon WebSystems, a maker of content-aware switching hardware, before helping to sell Alteon to Nortel at the apex of the dot-com craze in July, 2000, for US$7.8 billion. It was a master stroke of good marketing and good timing that made Lo very wealthy.

Cisco Systems is buying privately held IronPort Systems for $US830 million in cash and stock.

The cool reception from Wall Street after EMC's announcement that it would buy RSA Security had EMC executives feeling a bit flummoxed -- like the guy who elopes, only to find out that his friends didn't like his girlfriend to begin with.