Stories by Phil Hochmuth

  • Cisco not releasing NAC client in open source

    Cisco says it is not releasing its NAC client software code to the open source community, nor does the company have plans to exit the endpoint security client business, despite a Cisco executive telling the contrary to the media earlier this month.

  • Cisco's R&D outlook

    As Cisco's chief development officer, Charles Giancarlo oversees the company's R&D direction and strategy. With the expansion into new markets and technologies -- such as consumer electronics and video -- the types of engineers Giancarlo manages at Cisco have diversified beyond router, switch, ASIC and network software developers. He spoke with Phil Hochmuth about handling juggling Cisco's various R&D activities, as well as some enterprise security technologies to expect from Cisco this year.

  • Meet 3Com's new boss -- not the same old boss

    When 3Com CEO Scott Murray stepped down abruptly in August 2006, after just seven months on the job, 3Com veteran Edgar Masri was called in to take over his old company. Masri led successful enterprise, carrier and network access business units at 3Com in the 1990s. When the company shed these businesses in an ill-fated transformation attempt in 2000, Masri left the firm and became a venture capitalist at Matrix Partners, and later COO at WiMax firm Redline Communications.

  • 3Com touts open source

    3Com this week plans to make a fresh run at Cisco and Juniper with an enterprise network strategy focused on embedding security, management and VOIP services from itself and others into its routers and switches.

  • Stop wasting money on Gigabit Ethernet

    Mark Fabbi, vice president distinguished analyst at Gartner, leads the firms Enterprise Network Infrastructure research, and regularly has the ears of the top CIOs and network executives in the Fortune 500. At Gartner's Symposium/ITxpo event last year in San Francisco, he laid out this argument against over-overbuilding corporate LANs with Gigabit Ethernet: installing huge pipes to the desktop is a waste, as more users are working from remote offices and from home. Fabbi expands on this idea in this Q&A with Network World Senior Editor Phil Hochmuth.

  • What Redback acquisition means to Ericsson

    With its US$2 billion (AUD$2.55 billion) acquisition of Redback Networks this week, Ericsson is now in direct competition with some of its biggest partners -- Cisco and Juniper -- in the red-hot carrier edge routing market. However, the company says the move is more of an effort to obtain IP and Ethernet technology it can use to pull its telecom and mobile infrastructure products forward into the IP-based future of telecom, says Karl Thedeen, vice president of wireline products for the Swedish vendor. But that's not to say Ericsson isn't looking to grow Redback's market share and technology itself. Thedeen expanded on the merger this week with Phil Hochmuth. [The following is an edited transcript.]

  • What did Cisco buy? A look at its '06 acquisitions

    Cisco made no blockbuster buyouts in 2006. The US$256 million in announced cash and stocks it shelled out for acquisitions this year is chump change compared with 2005, when it began the year buying Airespace for US$450 million, and ended it with the US$6.7 billion Scientific-Atlanta merger.