Verizon Combines the Power of 4G LTE with the Cisco Cius Tablet to Improve Mobile Enterprise Collaboration

NEW YORK – July 13, 2011 –

The ancient Greeks relied on them. So did Moses when it came to accomplishing one of his most significant deliverables. And now businesses are equipping mobile workforces with tablets of their own to boost productivity and speed customer service.

To meet this newest trend in tablet use, Verizon is combining the power of its 4G LTE network with the Cisco Cius™ to help customers decentralize and accelerate decision-making for better business outcomes.

The Cisco Cius will be available to Verizon enterprise and government customers around the world later this summer, and those located domestically will be able to combine the device with a Verizon Wireless 4G LTE mobile hot spot. Designed for the enterprise, the Android-based Cisco Cius combines voice, video, collaboration and virtualization capabilities on one device.  When powered by Verizon's 4G LTE network, mobile workers will be able to easily use bandwidth-intensive video applications - including between devices - for more effective collaboration.

"Mobile applications over intelligent high-speed networks will continue to eliminate barriers in the workplace," said Mike Smith, vice president for Verizon enterprise communications, network and mobility sales. "We're forecasting a perfect storm where advanced enterprise tools such as the Cisco Cius mesh with the speeds made possible by 4G LTE to make the virtual office a more robust reality than ever." 

Putting Tablets to Work

In general, industries such as retail, financial services, healthcare and government can employ tablets to change the pace of their business.

Retail:  Sales associates can employ tablets while out on the floor to look up product and inventory information for customers, in addition to processing transactions on the spot. Financial Services:  Bankers and financial advisors can take advantage of the video capabilities of tablets for face-to-face meetings with clients, saving the time it takes to meet up at physical locations. Health care:  Medical professionals can use tablets to collaborate on patient care and speed critical decision-making. Government:  Tablets can increase productivity of government users - from military to civilian government field workers to emergency first responders - allowing them to enter information or share it quickly with remote offices to complete the business of government more efficiently.

Through Verizon's Managed Mobility portfolio, enterprise customers can securely deploy a wide range of devices to employees.  Capabilities include device management; expense tracking management; lock and wipe features for protecting sensitive data; and mobile delivery of popular business and consumer apps from the cloud.  In addition, the company offers a full suite of professional services to help organizations create policies and design mobility programs to suit varied requirements. 

Verizon is a global network communications leader in driving better business outcomes for enterprises and government agencies.  Verizon delivers integrated IT and communications solutions via its global IP and mobility networks to enable businesses to securely access information, share content and communicate.  Verizon is rapidly transforming to a cloud-based "everything-as-a-service" delivery model that will put the power of enterprise-class solutions within the reach of every business.  Find out more at www.verizonbusiness.com.

Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE, NASDAQ:VZ), headquartered in New York, is a global leader in delivering broadband and other wireless and wireline communications services to mass market, business, government and wholesale customers.  Verizon Wireless operates America's most reliable wireless network, with more than 104 million total connections nationwide.  Verizon also provides converged communications, information and entertainment services over America's most advanced fiber-optic network, and delivers seamless business solutions to customers around the world.  A Dow 30 company, Verizon employs a diverse workforce of more than 196,000 and last year generated consolidated revenues of $106.6 billion.  For more information, visit www.verizon.com.

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Cisco May Cut as Many as 10000 Jobs to Buoy Profit - Bloomberg

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Sales of Cisco’s switches and routers, which made up more than half of revenue last year, will continue to slip. Photographer: Jock Fistick/Bloomberg

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July 11 (Bloomberg) -- Brian Marshall, an analyst at Gleacher & Co., talks about the possibility that Cisco System Inc. may begin "pretty large" workforce reductions in August. Marshall speaks with Betty Liu and Jon Erlichman on Bloomberg Television's "In the Loop." (Source: Bloomberg)

July 11 (Bloomberg) -- Brian Modoff, an analyst at Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., talks about Cisco Systems Inc.'s cost-reduction strategy and the outlook for layoffs at the world's largest networking-equipment company. He speaks with Emily Chang and Cory Johnson on Bloomberg Television's "Bloomberg West." (Source: Bloomberg)

The cuts include as many as 7,000 jobs that would be eliminated by the end of August. Photographer: Gianluca Colla/Bloomberg

Cisco Systems Chief Executive Officer John Chambers. Photographer: Jacob Kepler/Bloomberg
Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO), the largest networking-equipment company, may cut as many as 10,000 jobs, or about 14 percent of its workforce, to revive profit growth, according to two people familiar with the plans.
The cuts include as many as 7,000 jobs that would be eliminated by the end of August, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t final. Cisco is also providing early-retirement packages to about 3,000 workers who accepted buyouts, the people said.
Cisco Chief Executive Officer John Chambers is slashing jobs and exiting less-profitable businesses as competitors such as Juniper Networks Inc. (JNPR) and Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) take market share in Cisco’s main businesses with lower-priced, simpler products. Sales of Cisco’s switches and routers, which made up more than half of revenue last year, will continue to slip, said Brian Marshall, an analyst at Gleacher & Co.
Eliminating jobs will help Cisco wring $1 billion in savings in fiscal 2012, the company said in May. Cisco expects costs of $500 million to $1.1 billion in the fiscal fourth quarter as a result of the voluntary early retirement program, it said in a quarterly filing.
“We will provide additional detail on the cost reductions, including layoffs, on our next earnings call,” Karen Tillman, a spokeswoman for San Jose, California-based Cisco, said in reference to an earnings call scheduled for early August. She declined to discuss job-cut figures.
The voluntary retirement packages included one year’s pay and medical benefits, and were offered to about 5,800 employees, two people said.
“The revenue trajectory hasn’t been where it should be,” Marshall, who has a “neutral” rating on the stock with a target price of $17, said in an interview. “The company is not staffed on an appropriate level. They simply have too many employees.”
Cisco gained 7 cents to $15.50 as of 9:32 a.m. New York time. It has dropped 24 percent this year before today on the Nasdaq Stock Market, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index has risen 4.9 percent.
Analysts at Gleacher and Miller Tabak & Co. said yesterday that the company would cut at least 5,000 jobs as part of a turnaround effort.
Cisco’s share of worldwide switching revenue dropped 5.8 percentage points to 68.5 percent in the first quarter of 2011 from a year earlier, according to a May report from Dell’Oro Group, a Redwood City, California-based researcher. Hewlett- Packard gained switching share in that period.
In global router sales, Cisco lost 6.4 percentage points to 54.2 percent of the market, while Juniper gained, Dell’Oro said.
Cisco’s revenue is projected to rise 7 percent this year to $43 billion, less than the 11 percent growth posted in 2010, according to the average estimate of analysts in a Bloomberg survey. Analysts have an average stock target price of $20.62, Bloomberg data show.
Cisco said in May that it shuttered the Flip video-camera unit and cut 550 jobs. The company may eliminate more positions in the consumer-product unit, which makes Linksys home- networking equipment, Marshall said. Some investors have said the company should exit consumer products entirely to focus on traditional enterprise offerings such as routers and switches. Cisco’s equipment is used by corporate networks and telephone and Internet service providers to direct Web traffic.
Trimming about 5,000 jobs would reduce operating expenses by about $1 billion annually and boost 2012 earnings by about 8 percent, Marshall said.
The company is also reorganizing management to streamline its business and focus on areas of growth, Cisco said in May. To speed decision making, the company organized field operations into three geographic regions and reformed a council-style management structure.
To contact the reporters on this story: Ashlee Vance in San Francisco at avance3@bloomberg.net; Olga Kharif in Portland at okharif@bloomberg.net; Zachary Tracer in New York at ztracer1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net
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Is Cisco in trouble?

There's no doubt that the way technology is procured, deployed and managed is at a tipping point. The network boundary is blurring and that's impacting lots of people in many ways.

One of the parties that's being impacted is Cisco. For years, they've been the leading supplier of network equipment for businesses. However, they've been under significant pressure recently.

HP's acquisition of 3Com was completed last year, forming the new HP Networking organisation that has been aggressively targeting existing Cisco customers. HP's enterprise gear now includes lifetime warranties in many cases and can match Cisco feature for feature. So, Cisco's main competition has a robust product offering and is hunting the Number 1 position.

The rapid shift towards cloud-based solutions is changing the way internal networks are designed and managed. For the last 20 years, connectivity has been focussed on enterprise resources being located inside the firewall. Storage arrays, application servers and other business essentials needed connectivity. That was based on ethernet and fiber technologies. Clients accessed those tools locally, only hitting the Internet when they needed something extra.

Today's world is changing. Applications and storage arrays can be rapidly deployed outside the firewall. That means that internal connectivity is less important with the focus placed on the external pipe. Consequently, Cisco's large clients are now going to be cloud providers who aggregate services for multiple clients. That will mean two things. Cisco will likely be selling fewer devices and the functions those devices carry out will change.

Cisco knows this - over recent

times, their fastest growing market segment has been telecoms. But in that market they face stiff competition from many other players. Similarly, they're under fire from a number of competitors in voice, security and even their consumer division. On the consumer side, they announced the closure of the FlipVideo business, purchased only two years ago and on the eve of releasing a new streaming video IP camera for consumers.

Clearly, Cisco understand the pressures they face. They see that consumer markets are more of a business driver than ever before. Consumers, for a long time, have had home internet connections that are at least as fast as those they enjoy at work and, in many cases, superior. If Australia's National Broadband Network is established there will be even greater pressure to build networks that have to deal with distributed clients accessing distributed applications and storage.

John Chambers, Cisco's CEO, said in a recent announcement that "As we move forward, our consumer efforts will focus on how we help our enterprise and service provider customers optimise and expand their offerings for consumers, and help ensure the network's ability to deliver on those offerings." That recognition of the changing market is important but faced with the rapid change that's taking place and the increasing competition it will take a very robust and nimble Cisco to maintain market share, much less increase it.

There was a time when it was said that no-one ever got fired for buying IBM. And for a a long time, the same could be said of network engineers and managers with regards to Cisco. But now there's viable competition for Cisco in every market they play in.

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