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Cisco to Acquire Perfigo
MisterFuRR writes "Looks like Cisco is going to acquire Perfigo. Perfigo is a developer of packaged network access control solutions that provide endpoint policy analysis, compliance, and access enforcement capabilities. I can just see it now: Linksys routers with stickers that say 'Perfigo Ready.'"
Perfigo was funded by a venture capital firm. Their whole purpose was to either a) make a bunch of money selling their stuff to individual customers b) make a bunch of money selling the stuff to a larger company
i re fox-a&q=100+best+companies+to+work+for+cisco&btnG= Search
Cisco, for years, has aquired many smaller companies for the technology and/or ideas the smaller companies have.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&client=f
I recall reading that cisco was among the top 100 companies to work for in the US. Rated by their employees...
I could choose: Nokia firewall, Juniper router, HP switches, Brocade SAN, and M$ radius server or I could cut one check to Cisco and get pretty much all the same function out of a combination of their boxes.
I'm not saying that it is right or wrong, but it is not a monopoly.
Cisco joins a long chain of American companies who buy out the little guy, thus increasing monopolization. There should be laws against this sort of thing
Cisco does not have a chance at monopoly status. They also aren't buying a rival router manufacturer, just acquiring a company which will add to their technology portfolio.
But, monopolies in themselves aren't illegal. I learned that in the third week of "economics". It is the actions of companies that get them into trouble. The definition of monopoly in my econ book reads something like: One business that can fulfill market demand at cheaper prices than two or more companies.
Basically, it can be good for the consumer in some cases (think gas & electric) which is why being a monopoly isn't illegal. It's when others try to take your sole status and you crush them and the innovation they would bring to the table...
Get your Unix fortune now!
The purpose of any company is to make a bunch of money. I'm not sure what your point is. I think it's great when a large company such as Cisco can bring a promising but under-utilized technology to market by acquiring a company. If this leads to fewer ddos's, great.
On another note, there's a great gem of market-speak in this pr:
"CleanMachines' turnkey approach directly complements Cisco NAC, which leverages a systems architecture approach that is more appropriate for Enterprise customers."
Why is "Enterprise" capitalized?
Cisco has always made a practice of purchasing companies that have technology they want. Why innovate when it's easier to acquire a company? Cisco is full of small dev teams that come from acquired companies. Linksys just happened to be a large purchase for them.
The Cisco Discovery Protocol is cool, but closed so other people had to invent their own, and most of them don't talk to each other. (GateD's discovery protocol, for example, is wonderful. Assuming the only router you ever want to use is GateD.)
Cisco's deployment of IPv6 was surprisingly slower than that of, say, Bay or Telebit. (For a long time, the only IPv6 hardware router that earned much respect was the one by Telebit. Not bad going, when you consider that they're hardly one of the giants in the router world.)
Other things are more curious. I'm fairly sure Cisco's IOS supports the ISIS protocol, but I don't think they do ESES or ESIS. Their QoS is extremely limited, being only three levels of priority per packet classification plus weighted fair queueing. I'm fairly sure they don't do RED, CBQ, HFQ, SFQ, ECN, IMQ or any of the fancier packet manipulations Netfilter nerds take for granted. Nor have they invented anything distinct but comparable in flexibility.
While I agree, then, that Cisco has had a huge impact on the networking world and that the innovation they have done has generally influenced a lot of the way things are done, they are still far short of where they could be. Now, I could be wrong, but I believe the poster's intent was that Cisco isn't going to get any closer to their potential by just taking other firms over. It may improve your product range, but it doesn't alter your mind's range. You can generally do a lot more by stretching the mind than stretching the wallet, although there are plenty of cases where doing the latter makes doing the former much easier.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)