Stories by Zeus Kerravala

  • In Pictures: 30 years of Cisco

    Cisco Systems turned 30 this month. Over the past 30 years, the company has been one of the most innovative companies not only in networking, but also the broader IT market. Cisco has leveraged its innovation as a way of moving into new markets and capitalizing on market transitions. Here are the top 10 Cisco innovations since its inception.

  • Why Facebook's SDN switch won't affect Cisco's customers

    Last week, Facebook announced a new product that's supposed to have the networking industry trembling. There were many news stories about Facebook's new homegrown SDN switch, known by the codename "Wedge" that's supposed to be the next big threat to Cisco and the traditional networking vendors. The operating system on the product runs Facebook's proprietary version of Linux called FBOSS.

  • Riverbed goes mobile with AppInternals 9.0

    Riverbed, the company known best for its Steelhead WAN Optimization product, has beefed up its Application Performance Management (APM) suite. In 2012, Riverbed acquired OPNET for a cool billion to complement the network performance management (NPM) suite it inherited when it purchased Mazu. The product formerly known as OPNET, AppInternals Xpert was rebranded to SteelCentral AppInternals, and this week the company released version 9.0 of the suite.

  • It's not time for Cisco CEO John Chambers to retire

    It seems every couple of years the chatter of John Chambers retirement as the CEO of Cisco comes up. Recently, there has been a flood of articles speculating when he might retire, including this one from the esteemed Jim Duffy. There seems to be no basis for this other than a report from Scott Raynovich, who cites a bunch of unnamed sources.

  • Why the Tail-F acquisition is a big win for Cisco

    This morning, Cisco announced its intention to purchase Sweden-based Tail-f Systems for about $175 million in cash and retention-based incentives. That seems reasonable for a software company that did about $30 million last year and is well aligned with the emerging SDN/NFV markets. Additionally, being headquartered in Sweden means Cisco can pay for this out of its foreign war chest instead of tapping into domestic cash.

  • How the Mac made a hacker out of me

    As long as I can remember, I've had an interest in computer programming. I started tinkering as a kid back in the early 1980s with a TI-99-4A and Atari XL Series (remember those membrane keyboards?), Atari STs and Apple II's. Most of that was just goofy kid stuff, sorting baseball and hockey cards and stuff that was Star Trek related.