What You Need To Know Now…
Cisco: One Step Closer To Consumer-Gear Freedom
Cisco is selling its Home Networking Business Unit, including all products, technology and the Linksys brand, to rival Belkin, which says it will maintain the well-known brand while supporting Linksys products moving forward. Belkin also will honor all valid warranties for current and future Linksys products, and Linksys employees will keep their jobs. Cisco bought Linksys in 2003, but the networking giant decided some time ago to exit the consumer market; it’s been selling consumer product lines division by division. After this deal closes (and no financials were available because the buyer is privately owned), Belkin will own some 30 percent of the U.S. home and small-business networking market, but that’s not the end of the story. The two still plan to work together on retail distribution, strategic marketing and products for the service-provider market.
Better Data, Better Delivery Key For 2013 Buying Decisions
According to Chris Curran, a PwC US principal and chief technologist for the company’s Advisory practice, "Our top trends report shows that a diverse and complex set of technologies are emerging, which CIOs and the C-suite need to embrace and incorporate into their business from strategy through execution." PwC notes several trends impacting businesses of all kinds this year: big data mining and analysis (it’s all about making better business decisions), digital delivery of products and services (while opening new pathways for growth, companies must shift underlying business operations to support this new business model) and data visualization (using dynamic virtualization techniques and advanced display devices to navigate through multiple data layers). If operators and vendors alike put some of these initiatives into practice, it could result in better hardware/software matches.
