Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » John Chambers

Cisco Accused Of Aiding Repression Against Falun Gong Spiritual Group In Lawsuit

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 23 May 2011 07:47:22 +0000

Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) is being accused of designing a surveillance system that allow the government in China to monitor and suppress the Falun Gong spiritual group according to a lawsuit filed against the networking and voice company. The lawsuit was filed in the Federal District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose.

The spiritual group claims that Cisco provided a surveillance system called the “Golden Shield.” The Golden Shield allegedly allowed the Chinese government track and censor the Internet activities of the group.

The Falun Gong members had suffered from false imprisonment, torture, and wrongful death as a result of the technology according to the lawsuit. The Human Rights Law Foundation in Washington D.C. filed the lawsuit on behalf of the group.

The 52-page lawsuit named Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers along with two other executives as the defendants. The group is seeking an unspecified amount of compensatory and punitive damages. A spokesperson for Cisco said that there was “no basis” for the allegations and that the company plans to defend the lawsuit “vigorously.”

“Cisco does not operate networks in China or elsewhere, nor does Cisco customize our products in any way that would facilitate censorship or repression,” said the Cisco spokesperson.

The Falun Gong is a religious momvement that has about 70-100 million followers. The Falun Gong movement was founded in 1992 and uses the Internet as a point for congregation for religous activities. The Chinese government started to view the group as a politiiccal threat and wanted to prevent them from gaining power.

Allegedly the Golden Shield (known as Policenet in Cisco marketing materials) resulted in the arrest of about 5,000 Falun Gong members. The lawsuit said that Cisco “competed aggressively” for the contract to design the Golden Shield system while knowing that it would be used to suppress the Falun Gong religion.

The three plaintiffs in the case are Ivy He (Canada), Liu Guifu (New York), Charles Lee (American citizen that traveled to China in 2003 and was detained/tortured at the airport until 2006).

[CNET]

Cisco Shutting Down Flip Video Camera Business After Acquiring It For $590 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 03:03:31 +0000

Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) is shutting down the Flip video camera business. Cisco acquired Pure Digital Technologies about two years ago. About 550 employees in the Pure Digital division will be laid off as part of the restructuring. Cisco said that they are planning to keep supporting Flipshare customers that upload media to the web.

“We are making key, targeted moves as we align operations in support of our network-centric platform strategy,” stated Cisco CEO John Chambers. “As we move forward, our consumer efforts will focus on how we help our enterprise and service provider customers optimize and expand their offerings for consumers, and help ensure the network’s ability to deliver on those offerings.”

[GigaOM]

Photo Of Silicon Valley Tech Titans and President Obama

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 22:10:06 +0000

The White House has uploaded some images on Flickr of President Barack Obama’s meeting with the tech titans of Silicon Valley. This photo symbolizes how the meeting went. The meeting was about how these executives plan to support entrepreneurship, increase exports, and strengthen the economy. The executives in this picture includes:

-John Doerr, partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
-Carol Bartz, president and CEO, Yahoo!
-John Chambers, CEO and chairman, Cisco Systems
-Dick Costolo, CEO, Twitter
-Larry Ellison, co-founder and CEO, Oracle
-Reed Hastings, CEO, NetFlix
-John Hennessy, president, Stanford University
-Steve Jobs, chairman and CEO, Apple
-Art Levinson, chairman and former CEO, Genentech
-Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO, Google
-Steve Westly, managing partner and founder, Westly Group
-Mark Zuckerberg, founder, president and CEO, Facebook

President Obama Meeting With Major Silicon Valley CEOs Today

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 20:51:26 +0000

President Barack Obama is making a trip to Silicon Valley today and is meeting with some major tech CEOs. The names of the executives that he is meeting was revealed by the L.A. Times. The meeting will be about supporting entrepreneurship, increasing exports, strengthening the economy, etc. Below is the list of people that he is meeting:

* John Doerr, partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
* Carol Bartz, president and CEO, Yahoo!
* John Chambers, CEO and chairman, Cisco Systems
* Dick Costolo, CEO, Twitter
* Larry Ellison, co-founder and CEO, Oracle
* Reed Hastings, CEO, NetFlix
* John Hennessy, president, Stanford University
* Steve Jobs, chairman and CEO, Apple
* Art Levinson, chairman and former CEO, Genentech
* Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO, Google
* Steve Westly, managing partner and founder, Westly Group
* Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder, president and CEO, Facebook

HP Offering 20% Promotion For Customers To Switch From Cisco

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 01:33:55 +0000

Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HPQ) is offering a 20% promotion discount to those who switch from similar services offered by Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO). “Cisco has never seen this level of competition before,” stated HP SVP and General Manager for networking Marius Haas. “We’re not going to let them gain an inch in servers, and we know that they’re going to be losing in networking,”

The promotion is called A Catalyst for Change. This is a play on Cisco’s Catalyst line of switches. Cisco CEO John Chambers is not worried about the marketing campaign launched by HP. “If you think the competition is H-P…in switching, I think it’s actually the startups, the mid-sized companies and candidly the Chinese,” said Chambers. “We’re going to be really tough on H-P in the data center.”

[WSJ]

Cisco Sees 19% Profit Drop; Acquires Chinese DVD Top Box Company DVN

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:23:21 +0000

Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) will be acquiring DVN (Digital Video Networks) for $44.5 million. Of that $44.5 million, $17.5 million will be paid up front and the rest of the $27 million will be paid based on sales performance. The deal is expected to close by the first half of 2010. DVN has about 160 million subscribers and the company plans to grow by another 200 million customers in the next 3-5 years. DVN will be rolled into Cisco’s International Cable Unit division.

Earlier today Cisco announced that their first quarter profit dropped 19% because of a drop in sales. However Cisco CEO John Chambers said that there are “strong sequential growth trends” as the economy is recovering. The profit posted was $1.79 billion for the quarter. This is down from $2.2 billion the year before. Cisco has recently partnered with VMware and EMC to sell data center products. Cisco plans to repurchase $10 billion worth of stock.

Cisco Sales Go Down, But CEO Sees Positive Signs In Economy

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 06:38:58 +0000

Cisco reported their fourth quarter earlier this week and as analysts expected, they were down. Sales were $8.5 billion which was down 18% year-over-year, but in the earnings report Cisco CEO John Chambers said that he is starting to see positive signs in the economy.

“Cisco delivered very solid quarterly and annual results in a challenging economic environment, as we continued our focus on disciplined execution and our customers’ success,” stated Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers. “We are confident in our strategic position in both existing and thirty adjacent markets. We saw a number of positive signs this quarter in the economy and in our business, especially comparing our sequential quarter-over-quarter order trends. If we continue to see these positive order trends for the next one to two quarters, we believe there is a good chance we will look back and see that the tipping point occurred in our business in Q4.”

According to Kaufman Brothers analyst Shaw Wu, Cisco is showing some impressive month-to-month progress, but year-over-year comps will definitely be tough. Cisco also reported a 46% drop in earnings.

[via Cisco PR/BusinessInsider/WSJ]

VMware Launches vSphere “Cloud Operating System”

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 03:55:51 +0000

Earlier this week VMware launched the vSphere “cloud operating system.” The new service attracted the likes of Michael Dell (Dell Inc. CEO), John Chambers (Cisco Systems CEO), Joe Tucci (EMC CEO), and Pat Gelsinger (Intel SVP) to the announcement meeting. Cisco was one of the first companies to work with VMware on the data center expansion. Intel has been a VMware partner for quite some time. And Dell plans to switch to get into the virtualized computing environment.

In conjunction with the launch of vSphere, EMC has launched a path management system software called PowerPath/VE. PowerPath is a software that finds the most optimal I/O path for data traveling through applications and storage resources.

vSphere is able to manage 64 processor cores in one server. VMware’s last system could support only 32 cores. Every day cloud computing is expanding and keeps pushing the limit.